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Print Page - Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
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Library of the Ancients => Final Fantasy IV Research & Development => Topic started by: Pinkpuff on May 06, 2015, 12:22:33 PM
Title: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 06, 2015, 12:22:33 PM
Ok so, I tried to create a battle that had Zeromus start in his "large" form... it worked but... my characters never get turns! Any idea what's going on here and/or how to fix it?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 06, 2015, 01:13:18 PM
Question... Does Zeromus take more turns, or does he just take one turn, then everything (except music and consistent animation) freezes?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: JCE3000GT on May 06, 2015, 05:29:26 PM
Did you change the battle AI or battle events?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 06, 2015, 05:36:03 PM
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 06, 2015, 07:20:44 PM
Ok "freezes" may have been a poor choice of wording... the game doesn't freeze.
The battle starts with Zeromus in his large form, as he should seeing he's the only monster in the battle (normally the battle has two monsters: small Zeromus and large Zeromus), and he gets turns and executes his AI as normal. However, my characters do not. Instead of getting turns they just sit there waiting for turns that will never come while Zeromus rails on them mercilessly.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 06, 2015, 07:34:33 PM
Huh, weird. I've never seen that before, and it doesn't smell of improperly written AI or corrupt battle assembly (two things I've experienced many times). I wonder... Is it possible the party is blocked from acting against (final) Zeromus until the ghostly friends appear and do their thing? Does that happen in your hack...?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 06, 2015, 07:49:05 PM
My intention was to not have them appear. Due to the dymanic nature of your final party, there's no way to know for sure who will be in or out, so rather than have ghostly appearances of people who are actually there in your party, I figured I'd just have it cut straight to the big guy. Trouble is, some mystery thing is happening during that battle to halt your characters' ATBs, and I guess something must cause it to release the lock on your ATBs during the small Zeromus' AI, the problem is how to find what it is...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 06, 2015, 08:05:31 PM
Do me a favor... Open the game in Geiger's and during that battle, have the Geiger's hex editor show the range beginning at 7E2A04 in RAM. This is the portion of RAM that, among other things, keeps track of the battle participants' ATB you should see a single byte (or two, maybe, if the party's first turn is being delayed a long time) counting steadily down toward zero every 0x14 bytes, one for each character. The first one will be at 2A09 or so... Everything else should be zeros. If you don't see exactly that, can you post a screenshot of what you do see there (you can cut everything else out, I just need to see the hex)?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 06, 2015, 09:17:09 PM
Hmm, I think you're all onto something when it comes to the friend visions being the reason why turns aren't coming up. It is probably a special conditional within the final battle itself that looks to see if all of this has been executed before ending. If you wanted you could switch the index (I think!) and all you would lose... or rather gain is Protect/Shell actually working. Since you don't have the "shake till doomsday" portion of the fight that check is rather egregious now.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 07, 2015, 05:16:51 AM
Maybe I can give you guys an unfinished Alpha version of the ROM? I've been thinking about giving you guys an early release to help iron out any technical issues before the public release if you're interested; this seems like as good an excuse as any to go ahead with it.
If it would help, here it is. The zip contains the patch for an unheadered 1.1 rom, the FF4kster config file, and a save file with slot 2 next to the final battle that's causing the issues:
By all means have at 'er, and even try the game out if you like and let me know any feedback you may have. It's still quite unpolished but the core gameplay is there. There are a couple of minor sidequests missing or not quite complete, but all the character-related ones are there and working, and the main story is more or less all there save for the ending. There are definitely some places where the NPC dialogue isn't finished (or in some cases, started) so there will be some people saying strange things or just saying "T". Besides those though, it should be more or less good to go.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 07, 2015, 08:20:55 AM
Maybe I can give you guys an unfinished Alpha version of the ROM? I've been thinking about giving you guys an early release to help iron out any technical issues before the public release if you're interested; this seems like as good an excuse as any to go ahead with it.
If it would help, here it is. The zip contains the patch for an unheadered 1.1 rom, the FF4kster config file, and a save file with slot 2 next to the final battle that's causing the issues:
By all means have at 'er, and even try the game out if you like and let me know any feedback you may have. It's still quite unpolished but the core gameplay is there. There are a couple of minor sidequests missing or not quite complete, but all the character-related ones are there and working, and the main story is more or less all there save for the ending. There are definitely some places where the NPC dialogue isn't finished (or in some cases, started) so there will be some people saying strange things or just saying "T". Besides those though, it should be more or less good to go.
Christmas has come early! I'll definitely see if I can't get the issues fixed and once that is done (since that is the most pressing issue) I will play the game in earnest and give you my feedback on it in the same style I have with Chillyfeez's Threat from Within.
:edit: Alright! Just as I had thought it is a unique check that occurs every few moments in the Zeromus battle. To get rid of this you would change...
That second value to any other number that is not Zeromus, my suggestion is to change it to FF since that battle formation is normally unused.
In ROM this is...
001A37B.
And there you go! I fought the entire battle and noticed anything go amiss by changing this.
Now that the main problem is solved my next posts will include my thoughts on the mod itself!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 07, 2015, 10:35:41 AM
Hmm, beginning seems normal enough, I see that Cecil starts with a fair amount of different armor though only maintaining the Shadow Sword. The Shadow Sword gives Cecil 3 Wisdom, very nice and because of that it is clearly worth hanging onto.
Rosa became an Archer to be of help, eh? Only instance of text changing I've seen so far, but it is a good attention to detail.
Ah, the opening treasure chests were changed from 480 GP and an Ether to 300 GP and a Tent, interesting changes.
Looks like Kain also comes with new equipment. Much the same as Cecil except for a Wooden Spear.
It seems as if you've kept the Remedy over Everything style of game, it keeps it closest to the US SNES Version I suppose.
You cut down on the Training Room... outside soldier's text. Likely to make room elsewhere.
Ah slight continuity error, the woman in the Item Shop still says to take "Cure1 and "Heal Potions" Instead of Potions and Remedy.
Oh, Cecil starts with some status magic, very nice.
I have to say I love the Dark Slash graphic, how did you change the color of the slashes? Or... were they tied to the weapon palette all along?
Oh, the Eyemoths can put to sleep when they hit. A nice early game touch.
Hmm, looks as if the Mist Dragon deals only 1 damage to Cecil, about 20 to Kain. Was her attacks made Holy Elemental or something? Or did you not alter the attack of the Mist Dragon? Since it seems Vanilla for the most part thus far, I'll assume she hasn't been changed.
Um... I walk into Mist and am attacked by the Eight Elemental Fiends in a battle, Milon uses Quake and that's all she wrote. I think I'll need to go into triggers and fix that...
Yes, in FF4kster it looked as if it was somehow switched to "Lugae Battles"....
Hrm! When I try to fix it, it shows up fine in the program and if I exit the program and re-enter it is still changed, but in-game it is still the Fiends battle. It's as if it's not actually saving (even though the time it was last modified does change) somehow and because of this there's nothing more I can actually do.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 07, 2015, 11:22:52 AM
Hmm, beginning seems normal enough, I see that Cecil starts with a fair amount of different armor though only maintaining the Shadow Sword. The Shadow Sword gives Cecil 3 Wisdom, very nice and because of that it is clearly worth hanging onto.
Looks like Kain also comes with new equipment. Much the same as Cecil except for a Wooden Spear.
This is to establish right out of the gate that the Dark Knight can equip generic gear as well, it doesn't have to be DK-specific like his gear in the original.
It seems as if you've kept the Remedy over Everything style of game, it keeps it closest to the US SNES Version I suppose.
It also keeps the inventory a lot less cluttered with such specific things. There's no need to have one item for each specific ailment IMO, unless you have unlimited item space, which this game definitely doesn't.
You cut down on the Training Room... outside soldier's text. Likely to make room elsewhere.
The training room text will be totally redone, but not til the rest of the game is finalized. Don't want to go explaining something that's no longer relevant or accurate ^_^
Oh, the Eyemoths can put to sleep when they hit. A nice early game touch.
I found statuses were not that prevalent in the original, especially early on, so I gave a few monster types some different things to add on a hit just to shake things up a little.
Hmm, looks as if the Mist Dragon deals only 1 damage to Cecil, about 20 to Kain. Was her attacks made Holy Elemental or something? Or did you not alter the attack of the Mist Dragon? Since it seems Vanilla for the most part thus far, I'll assume she hasn't been changed.
Unchanged. I'm gonna chalk it up to randomness, but I will keep an eye out for it in future playthroughs. I'm not that concerned though as it is only the first boss...
Um... I walk into Mist and am attacked by the Eight Elemental Fiends in a battle, Milon uses Quake and that's all she wrote. I think I'll need to go into triggers and fix that...
D'oh! I hijacked the mist trigger to test the elemental fiend battle on the overworld to see if it made a difference regarding the Ciriatto targeting glitch. I fixed this and reuploaded, so redownloading and repatching your rom (a clean one) should do the trick. You should be able to reuse your existing save.
Yes, in FF4kster it looked as if it was somehow switched to "Lugae Battles"....
Hrm! When I try to fix it, it shows up fine in the program and if I exit the program and re-enter it is still changed, but in-game it is still the Fiends battle. It's as if it's not actually saving (even though the time it was last modified does change) somehow and because of this there's nothing more I can actually do.
That's strange... well if you're still experiencing the problem after redownloading and repatching, let me know.
:edit: Oops, I missed your edit to the previous post! You'll have to fix that byte again after repatching, but in future uploads it will be included. Thanks so much, and sorry about that!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 07, 2015, 01:36:57 PM
Looks like everything is work a-okay once more!
I do have to say that "Summoners, those who can use Summons" does seem a little redundant. But then again I imagine this is a literal change from the original text that was there. I take it you're likely going to avoid the term Eidolon or Espers?
Ah, I noticed you improved the power of the Soldiers and Captain slightly, dealing 18-23 damage to Cecil. A good first use of Poison and Blind then to mitigate the damage while taking out the captain. Good on you giving Venom an actual attack stat instead of that quizzical "1" the original game used.
Wooden Rod, Iron Ring in the left hand and Gloves equipped, let's see here... Wooden Rod increases Wisdom by 3 and the Iron Ring increases Vitality by 3. Rather neat, Rydia has 9 Defense in comparison to Cecil's 16, it does reduce the gap and could balance enemy's attacks so that they aren't killing Rydia in one blow, but at the same time are still dealing decent damage to Cecil.
"Someone picked up a sick girl from Baron fainting." Something... seems off about the composition of that sentence, I can't put my finger on it though.
Wow, very different Armor Shop. Let's see here...
Ah, the RubyRing increase Wisdom by 3. That is a tough decision... for early levels Rydia likely needs the defense so she isn't killed in one attack.
Bard's Robe decreases Magic Defense by 1, but I bet it still prevents Silence.
The Defense Gloves give no Magic Defense but give a nice boost to Vitality making it so that Rydia can have Just as much Defense as Cecil... was that intended?
I also noticed that Cecil can equip a lot of this Cloth items, meaning that he can have a respectable magic Defense score, if desired.
Ah, new Weapon Shop as well! A Broadsword, a Dagger, the Dreamer Harp, Short Bow and Wooden Arrows (instead of Iron, interesting FFIII reference)
I'll pick up a dagger, maybe Tellah can equip it, but I imagine it's probably for Edward as an alternative to the Harp.
Looks as if no one but Rosa (so far) can equip Bows and Arrows, FFIV DS reference?
15 Attack compared to 10, not a bad deal, but I imagine that there will still be enemies weak to the Dark Sword, so I'll hold onto it.
Ah! You changed the way Dark Wave worked to apply to only the Dark Swords, nice touch!
Oh, Rydia starts with Imp, eh? How peculiar...
Hmm? Changed Animation on Mage Arrows? Well... they do look more like Arrows now in any event.
Ah... it seems as if Poison doesn't Actually Poison? I imagine it's a Dark Elemental attack, all the same though.
I just noticed that Rydia lost her Black and White Magic, that does make her play extraordinarily differently. It does mean that her Will stat is rather useless though as with her Wisdom for the start of the game since Mage Arrows will always be the better choice than Imp. Granted once she gains some MP "Help!" will have some definite use.
I see, Poison inflicts Sap on the foe.
Wha? A Lit-Bolt from Larva and WingMoths? I'm always glad to see Drop Tables being adjusted!
Oh. Level 5 Rydia learns Chocobo, nevermind she's good to go then.
Already Cecil has stopped one-hit killing foes. Good. It takes a lucky high range hit to kill the EvilShells.
Ice-Ball from the EvilShell's hmm? Again it makes battles worth fighting.
The EvilShell's damage though may leave something to be desired. Looks as if Damage Tables may not have been touched, possibly while HP was adjusted at least.
Imp does eventually do respectable enough damage for 2 MP, making it superior to Mage Arrows.
Tellah starts with a Lot more magic than before! But notable his MP pool has been cut in half as you've said before. I noticed you took away Osmose though so you have That much magic until you get to a save point or use an Ether, it's very much in line with classic FF spell charges in some respects.
Hmm, did you re-include Magic Evasion? I noticed that Goblin Punch against an EvilShell seemed to have a range of 8-64!
Whoa. Was not expecting Rydia to learn Shiva at Level 10!
So the Ice Rod now has a +5 Wisdom bonus? Quite a lot there. But I somewhat imagine this +5 will hold true for every basic elemental rod.
It's interesting to see Cecil being useful against Flan with his Poison magic.
The Darkness Sword also increases Wisdom by 3. Full upgrade then.
Mythril instead of Hades, eh? Ah well, looks like it has the same functionality.
The Darkness sword can Blind, good to know.
Looks as if Octomammoth doesn't lose legs anymore and though he attacks often, he doesn't have much of a hit. Also Cecil is dealing 400-500 damage with his normal attack! I guess Octomammoth is x4 weak to Dark?
And after Berserking Cecil he lasted for two more attacks.
Bit of a different treasure set up in Damcyan with a Bardrobe instead of a RubyRing.
Oh I see, Magic Gloves replaced the Rune Ring with the same bonuses to Wisdom and Will in any case.
Hmm, possibly a glitch, the soldier who is supposed to vanish to access the storeroom continues to exist even after the Damcyan events. I looked for another way to there, but there doesn't seem to be.
The Dagger provides a nice Agility boost for Edward, if nothing else.
Well I think this seems a good place to call it for now, I don't want to overload too much and overwhelm you with an enormous wall of text.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 07, 2015, 02:20:58 PM
I do have to say that "Summoners, those who can use Summons" does seem a little redundant. But then again I imagine this is a literal change from the original text that was there. I take it you're likely going to avoid the term Eidolon or Espers?
They originally say "call" and "callers". There are a lot of places in the original dialogue where they reference something whose name was truncated due to character limits and then they reference it in the dialogue by the truncated name. An example that always stood out like a sore thumb to me was "Leviatan" instead of "Leviathan". It's like, what, is this Leviathan but with a tan? "Leviatan"? Same thing with "Octomamm". Some things don't truncate well though so I use their full names in the text and the monster name just put elipsis as the last character. So, "Octomammoth" -> "Octomam..." or Scarmiglione -> "Scarmig..."
Ah, I noticed you improved the power of the Soldiers and Captain slightly, dealing 18-23 damage to Cecil. A good first use of Poison and Blind then to mitigate the damage while taking out the captain. Good on you giving Venom an actual attack stat instead of that quizzical "1" the original game used.
Once again I think this is simply luck of the random number generator. I'm pretty sure I didn't touch those monsters' stats.
"Someone picked up a sick girl from Baron fainting." Something... seems off about the composition of that sentence, I can't put my finger on it though.
Original wording. The part of the plot that's the same only has dialogue changes to either fit with game changes (e.g. Rosa being an Archer rather than a White Mage) or with the name truncation thing. The rest was left alone.
Ah, the RubyRing increase Wisdom by 3. That is a tough decision... for early levels Rydia likely needs the defense so she isn't killed in one attack.
Bard's Robe decreases Magic Defense by 1, but I bet it still prevents Silence.
The Defense Gloves give no Magic Defense but give a nice boost to Vitality making it so that Rydia can have Just as much Defense as Cecil... was that intended?
I also noticed that Cecil can equip a lot of this Cloth items, meaning that he can have a respectable magic Defense score, if desired.
Ah, new Weapon Shop as well! A Broadsword, a Dagger, the Dreamer Harp, Short Bow and Wooden Arrows (instead of Iron, interesting FFIII reference)
I'll pick up a dagger, maybe Tellah can equip it, but I imagine it's probably for Edward as an alternative to the Harp.
Looks as if no one but Rosa (so far) can equip Bows and Arrows, FFIV DS reference?
15 Attack compared to 10, not a bad deal, but I imagine that there will still be enemies weak to the Dark Sword, so I'll hold onto it.
Ah! You changed the way Dark Wave worked to apply to only the Dark Swords, nice touch!
Thanks! Dark elemental is usually more of a handicap than a benefit so I made it so that he can only dark wave with a dark sword (also makes it more flavorful).
Hmm? Changed Animation on Mage Arrows? Well... they do look more like Arrows now in any event.
The spell (index) attached to the wooden rod was changed and, even with all the same details, it won't animate her "throwing" the projectile. So I just used the needle animation.
Ah... it seems as if Poison doesn't Actually Poison? I imagine it's a Dark Elemental attack, all the same though.
I just noticed that Rydia lost her Black and White Magic, that does make her play extraordinarily differently. It does mean that her Will stat is rather useless though as with her Wisdom for the start of the game since Mage Arrows will always be the better choice than Imp. Granted once she gains some MP "Help!" will have some definite use.
I see, Poison inflicts Sap on the foe.
Wha? A Lit-Bolt from Larva and WingMoths? I'm always glad to see Drop Tables being adjusted!
Oh. Level 5 Rydia learns Chocobo, nevermind she's good to go then.
Already Cecil has stopped one-hit killing foes. Good. It takes a lucky high range hit to kill the EvilShells.
Ice-Ball from the EvilShell's hmm? Again it makes battles worth fighting.
The EvilShell's damage though may leave something to be desired. Looks as if Damage Tables may not have been touched, possibly while HP was adjusted at least.
Imp does eventually do respectable enough damage for 2 MP, making it superior to Mage Arrows.
Tellah starts with a Lot more magic than before! But notable his MP pool has been cut in half as you've said before. I noticed you took away Osmose though so you have That much magic until you get to a save point or use an Ether, it's very much in line with classic FF spell charges in some respects.
Hmm, did you re-include Magic Evasion? I noticed that Goblin Punch against an EvilShell seemed to have a range of 8-64!
What do you mean by "re-include"? I don't recall doing anything special in that regard...
So the Ice Rod now has a +5 Wisdom bonus? Quite a lot there. But I somewhat imagine this +5 will hold true for every basic elemental rod.
It's interesting to see Cecil being useful against Flan with his Poison magic.
The Darkness Sword also increases Wisdom by 3. Full upgrade then.
Mythril instead of Hades, eh? Ah well, looks like it has the same functionality.
The Darkness sword can Blind, good to know.
Looks as if Octomammoth doesn't lose legs anymore and though he attacks often, he doesn't have much of a hit. Also Cecil is dealing 400-500 damage with his normal attack! I guess Octomammoth is x4 weak to Dark?
And after Berserking Cecil he lasted for two more attacks.
Bit of a different treasure set up in Damcyan with a Bardrobe instead of a RubyRing.
Oh I see, Magic Gloves replaced the Rune Ring with the same bonuses to Wisdom and Will in any case.
Hmm, possibly a glitch, the soldier who is supposed to vanish to access the storeroom continues to exist even after the Damcyan events. I looked for another way to there, but there doesn't seem to be.
Hmm, did you re-include Magic Evasion? I noticed that Goblin Punch against an EvilShell seemed to have a range of 8-64!
What do you mean by "re-include"? I don't recall doing anything special in that regard...
enemy Magic Evasion and Evasion in the original game is bugged (or purposely sabotaged by the makers) to never actually be put into monster's stats. So enemies that were supposed to mitigate good amounts of damage don't because they have no actual evasion and the original game only has a defense rating max of 5 for monsters because someone got very. Very lazy.
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It's a much more nerfed Shiva than what you might be used to in the original ^_^
Ah, I will keep that in mind.
Quote
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Hmm, possibly a glitch, the soldier who is supposed to vanish to access the storeroom continues to exist even after the Damcyan events. I looked for another way to there, but there doesn't seem to be.
Not a glitch.
Oh? Possibly a gateway to a new sidequest down the line? I will keep it in mind for later.
Well I think this seems a good place to call it for now, I don't want to overload too much and overwhelm you with an enormous wall of text.
It's all good! Seems like you're enjoying yourself so far!
Very much so! Last night I wanted to finish up my Dark Knight to Paladin in-battle swap hack for Bahamut-ZERO but now I can get back to your game.
Seems as if the Weepers can Charm on hit, makes good use of their low attack, a good choice.
Hmm, he's gained a few levels so he can probably switch to the Lamia Harp. After all Charm is not to be underestimated.
For the Antlion best to equip Edward with the Dagger and Iron Ring, where Rydia can go all out with the RubyRing for the Wisdom...
Antlion was rather pathetic, but I don't think anything's been done to him so the extra Wisdom gear for Rydia and Cecil's means of magical damage AND Edward's Haste makes it a relative joke.
Poison's HP Drain is quite useful early on, especially when dealing with Flans in an itemless and MP Cost efficient manner.
It was a rather fun dungeon, blazing out of it with Allure really showed Edward's worth.
Ah ha! I love the idea of changing the basic Fire spell into a Bomb, as obviously that would be a bit more traumatic for Rydia to deal with instead of the basic element of Fire, but the Actual Creature that destroyed her village.
Wow! I don't recall bows and arrows being This powerful at the start. You've really made her into a worthy Archer.
Hmm... was Rosa's sprite changed ever so slightly? I don't recall the purple on the hem of her robes and tiara.
Since Rydia will be learning the four normally optional summons does that mean the Summon Orbs is a different range of spells for a different character?
Hmm, I noticed Mt. Hobbs got a slight palette change to look colder, nice attention to detail.
Admittedly Rosa trying to push Rydia to summon the very creature that destroyed her village does seem a bit heartless.
Love the new animation you used for it, even down to the Summon Orb sound. There's Technically an unused Map Sprite in the Visual Effects for Summon Orbs (and Black Magic as well) but there's no way to easily activate them in a normal sense without custom code. Now Rydia has one of my favorite Summons! I like the Bomb Summon because it's not just Fire Elemental, but its damage is based upon Rydia's HP which is a neat concept. The Mist Dragon uses a similar one except without an elemental.
Interesting... the Dagger must have replaced a piece of Mythril equipment since it deals racial damage to Spirits, nice touch! It makes it worth putting Edward in the front row.
Group of Cockatrices? Just use Allure and let them have at it!
Bombs provide a decent challenge, they can be mitigated by using Cecil's Blind and following with Edward's Speed Song.
Ah hey, a Mythril Sword, but I'm no spring chicken, I recall that the MomBomb is also weak to dark (normally...)
Hmm, Skeletons have a slightly different AI set, instead of using Lit-1 they go with Calcify an interesting idea and can be very dangerous in large unmanaged groups.
Heh, you took out the Auto-Battle and just have Yang wrecking them on the map, unexpected.
Haha, nice little joke from Rosa to Rydia there.
After Explode, one Shiva is enough to take out the Bombs.
And that's Mt. Hobbs done. A good little display of the skills acquired so far. Mainly though Allure wrecks most of the enemies in the place.
?!Wha-?! You mean to say a Kingdom of Monks isn't selling the most powerful Dark Knight Equipment?!
With all of the Strength boosting gear you get an additional 11 Strength for nearly any character.(+8 for Cecil which is a guaranteed Attack Multiplier)
If I'm not mistaken this equipment setup will let me steamroll through a large portion of the game. You did raise the Headband's price at least and Bracers cost a pretty penny.
An interesting idea that since neither Rosa or Rydia have healing skills anymore they wouldn't be assisting the healers but since they are ranged fighters it makes sense to have them above. Nice change.
You even have them show up! Now that is a welcome change.
Heh, Rydia using Phoenix Downs instead of a simple cure spell actually makes a bit more sense.
A Thunder Rod from the Fabul hidden chests, eh? An interesting thought. Not as universally useful as the Fire Rod would be at this point (maybe). But it's welcome all the same it does give Rydia the spread of all three elements now.
Hmm, the White Mage in the tower still says that she wishes she could use the White Magic as well as Rosa. Rosa in this only has Time Magic, I don't think that a healing White Mage would be so envious of that.
The Ancient Sword? That actually makes sense for this point in the game rather than After you have the Legend Sword to be given a sword with 5 less attack and no bonuses (It can Curse, but that's hardly necessary in the normal game). But is it now an actual Dark Sword as the King of Fabul says?
Eh? Warped straight to the boat? Thank goodness I de-quipped everyone then!
...What?
We made it to shore? Well... I better re-equip everyone again!
Haha! Rydia's little quip at the end there is a fantastic nod to the original game.
Oh, Ancient Sword gives 5 Wisdom, neat.
Wow, we're right at Baron!
Well I obviously need to loot Mist first before entering the City since I'm running blind from here.
Or... not. Was not expecting a plot-wall but it makes sense.
The guards are always getting drunk? I know that definitely wasn't in the original game.
Guards do not care a lick about Charm, they deal some pretty good damage at this point making them worthy midbosses. However their lack of HP really works against them.
Wow, the Shadow Gear is expensive. I'll probably pass on it though for the moment. I'll pick up the Shadow Shield though.
Ah, I may want to go back for the rest of the Shadow Gear eventually if they all supply Wisdom boosts.
Hmm, the Mythril Knife however may not have been the best investment, with its only difference that I can see being +5 attack from the Dagger. Mythril Staff seems a bit useless for this party setup, but it's something to hold onto for later with the +5 Will it provides.
And onto the Waterway!
Dark Wave and Kick make a pretty good combo that one wouldn't ordinarily get to use for very long or too much benefit.
Oh wow, these foes deal some significant damage! Nevermind what I said earlier, this is providing an adequate challenge! The Worth of Blind is on Great display here!
Salve is so much more useful here than it has Ever been in the past! Very good balancing work here.
Rydia learned Ramuh right on time!
Oh... Cecil learned Sleep, that could be very useful.
Wow... I had to run to survive an encounter and now because of my reckless bravado I am nearly out of resources. I am actually going to need to backtrack to an item store to see that I am adequately prepared!
Edward learned the Life Song, thank goodness! That will make getting through here on the return much more manageable, haha.
Alright, 25 Potions, 25 Phoenix Downs, let's go at it again!
If I may make a slight suggestion, perhaps the Harps could increase Edward's Will? I noticed that all of his Songs are considered White Magic and as it stands they are a little bit useless on their own at the moment. (Though I suppose the Dreamer Harp has some strategic use being able to Sleep a Foe.)
Also did you do something to rehide the hidden paths? I noticed they are much more difficult to see. I wasn't sure if it's the new emulator I'm using though.
The Coral Sword even made it in! I like how its weaker than the Ancient Sword, but will be better overall for this area and the ?upcoming boss fight?
Hah! I did not actually expect to find Cid in the dungeon! Also, one slight little graphical glitch. If your main character isn't Cecil the graphic will still be the palette of the character you switched from. A pause buffer should prevent that, but since no other new scene has had that you're probably aware of this.
Ah? A choice? Well I'll leave Cid alone for now and explore where I can.
Oh I loved that little running animation between the soldier and Cecil, it felt so MGS.
Aw... I love Cid's new dialogue and it helps clear up a point that hasn't been made so far in the original translation that the King raised Cecil and Kain.
I'll give Cid some of my old Mythril equipment (thankfully I hung onto it) and we're good to go.
Free reign, hm? I thought for certain I'd have to deal with Baigan, granted without the Twins and their monster sense, that could have been a bit tricky to work with.
I like Cecil's more forceful renunciation of the false king, rather than the confused respectfulness he still holds for him in the original.
Cagnazzo is first to join the fray!
Thunder... did not break the barrier, oh now I'm worried.
Wow, not being able to dispel the Water makes Cagnazzo quite a threat! Thankfully I was adequately leveled so my people could survive the onslaught, and thank goodness for the Hi Potion treasures along the way or else I may have been in real trouble.
Received Water Crystal... hah...
Baigan's a good guy!!! This is awesome! I loved the Cecil pushing Baigan animation, very good work.
Oh.. this is an interesting plot twist, I had never considered the Fiends getting their power from the Elemental Crystals and why Cagnazzo sought Mysidia's first.
Misty Mountains?!
"Far over the Misty Mountains Cold... to dungeons deep and caverns old... We must away, ere break of day to find our long forgotten gold..."
This mod just became one of the most awesome I have ever played.
Ah, the party leader jumping up and spinning with their hand raised is such a neat little animation.
Unfortunately I have to call it here... but this has been a most enjoyable time! This game literally just kick-started into high gear! And off to Troia through the Misty Mountains!
But that will have to wait until later, work calls...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 08, 2015, 06:45:13 PM
I love hearing your reactions; it's almost like watching a let's play... or like reading one I guess...
Hmm, did you re-include Magic Evasion? I noticed that Goblin Punch against an EvilShell seemed to have a range of 8-64!
What do you mean by "re-include"? I don't recall doing anything special in that regard...
enemy Magic Evasion and Evasion in the original game is bugged (or purposely sabotaged by the makers) to never actually be put into monster's stats. So enemies that were supposed to mitigate good amounts of damage don't because they have no actual evasion and the original game only has a defense rating max of 5 for monsters because someone got very. Very lazy.
Ok so, "putting it back in" would equate to giving some monsters magic defense indexes that included a positive percentage?
Ah ha! I love the idea of changing the basic Fire spell into a Bomb, as obviously that would be a bit more traumatic for Rydia to deal with instead of the basic element of Fire, but the Actual Creature that destroyed her village.
This is one of those things that just happened to fall into place. I couldn't have her learn fire since she didn't get black magic, so I had to think of an appropriate summon to have her learn. It just turned out that the most appropriate summon happens to be even more appropriate than the most appropriate black spell!
Wow! I don't recall bows and arrows being This powerful at the start. You've really made her into a worthy Archer.
Thanks! I wanted her to be comparable to the other "main fighter / secondary mage" type characters. The elemental arrows all have 0 attack; the power just comes from the bow, except for the wooden arrows (and later the yoichi arrows) which are vanilla but give an attack power boost.
Since Rydia will be learning the four normally optional summons does that mean the Summon Orbs is a different range of spells for a different character?
Not as of this writing, but that is an interesting idea I hadn't thought of! Currently they've just been removed as item drops (unless I missed one by mistake or something).
Love the new animation you used for it, even down to the Summon Orb sound. There's Technically an unused Map Sprite in the Visual Effects for Summon Orbs (and Black Magic as well) but there's no way to easily activate them in a normal sense without custom code. Now Rydia has one of my favorite Summons! I like the Bomb Summon because it's not just Fire Elemental, but its damage is based upon Rydia's HP which is a neat concept. The Mist Dragon uses a similar one except without an elemental.
In this hack, Bomb is neutral (I thought it was neutral in the original too) and MIst is Holy.
Interesting... the Dagger must have replaced a piece of Mythril equipment since it deals racial damage to Spirits, nice touch! It makes it worth putting Edward in the front row.
If so then that's a bug. FF4kster is reporting the Dagger has no elemental or racial properties...
Hmm, the White Mage in the tower still says that she wishes she could use the White Magic as well as Rosa. Rosa in this only has Time Magic, I don't think that a healing White Mage would be so envious of that.
Thanks! This is exactly the kind of polishing-type stuff I need to look for at this point in development.
The Ancient Sword? That actually makes sense for this point in the game rather than After you have the Legend Sword to be given a sword with 5 less attack and no bonuses (It can Curse, but that's hardly necessary in the normal game). But is it now an actual Dark Sword as the King of Fabul says?
Yup, it's a dark sword from long ago... thus, Ancient ^_^
We made it to shore? Well... I better re-equip everyone again!
This is the point where the game starts to really diverge plot-wise from the original. Hence, the other reason I felt the King of Fabul's speech was an appropriate place from which to draw a subtitle for the hack ^_^
Hmm, the Mythril Knife however may not have been the best investment, with its only difference that I can see being +5 attack from the Dagger. Mythril Staff seems a bit useless for this party setup, but it's something to hold onto for later with the +5 Will it provides.
Mythril staff casts Cure as an item (can be split or single).
Wow... I had to run to survive an encounter and now because of my reckless bravado I am nearly out of resources. I am actually going to need to backtrack to an item store to see that I am adequately prepared!
Yes, items are much more of a thing in this than they would have been originally.
Edward learned the Life Song, thank goodness! That will make getting through here on the return much more manageable, haha.
Life song has the advantage of being "free" but the disadvantage of taking its sweet time to cast, during which time the monsters are (probably) attacking you. Also the healing is proportional to the target's max HP, so the fighters will get more out of it than the mages.
If I may make a slight suggestion, perhaps the Harps could increase Edward's Will? I noticed that all of his Songs are considered White Magic and as it stands they are a little bit useless on their own at the moment. (Though I suppose the Dreamer Harp has some strategic use being able to Sleep a Foe.)
What exactly does will affect in these spells? Defense -> nothing, it's a static defense increase; Speed -> again, nothing, it's a static increase; Alure -> the chance of it working maybe, but it's already pretty high; Life -> it's a fixed amount proportional to max HP
Also did you do something to rehide the hidden paths? I noticed they are much more difficult to see. I wasn't sure if it's the new emulator I'm using though.
Nope, and I think that might be the source of the other perceived graphical differences.
Hah! I did not actually expect to find Cid in the dungeon! Also, one slight little graphical glitch. If your main character isn't Cecil the graphic will still be the palette of the character you switched from. A pause buffer should prevent that, but since no other new scene has had that you're probably aware of this.
Good catch, thanks! I forget little details like that now and then; especially if they involve changing your lead character.
Thunder... did not break the barrier, oh now I'm worried.
Wow, not being able to dispel the Water makes Cagnazzo quite a threat! Thankfully I was adequately leveled so my people could survive the onslaught, and thank goodness for the Hi Potion treasures along the way or else I may have been in real trouble.
You can't dispel the barrier yourself, but if left long enough he will take it down for a bit. He's no longer scared of the Lit ^_^
Baigan's a good guy!!! This is awesome! I loved the Cecil pushing Baigan animation, very good work.
Oh.. this is an interesting plot twist, I had never considered the Fiends getting their power from the Elemental Crystals and why Cagnazzo sought Mysidia's first.
Thanks! Once again, things happening to fall into place and happening to make more sense than the original.
"Far over the Misty Mountains Cold... to dungeons deep and caverns old... We must away, ere break of day to find our long forgotten gold..."
This mod just became one of the most awesome I have ever played.
You have no idea how happy that makes me! ^_^ Though you and chillyfeez (and possibly others) deserve at least some of the credit for helping me get certain things to work.
Ah, the party leader jumping up and spinning with their hand raised is such a neat little animation.
Unfortunately I have to call it here... but this has been a most enjoyable time! This game literally just kick-started into high gear! And off to Troia through the Misty Mountains!
But that will have to wait until later, work calls...
Thanks! And you're quite right, you'll start seeing more and more completely new material from here on out, though a lot may be somewhat familiar, at least in certain ways. You'll see what I mean.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 08, 2015, 07:55:25 PM
I can't wait to play this. I'm trying to balance the stuff I'm doing with TfW and getting into UC. I really don't mind spoilers, so I'm keeping up with Grimoire's commentary. If I happen to find anything additional worth mentioning, I'll chime in, but I definitely won't be playing through as quickly as he is.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 10, 2015, 12:16:29 AM
I love hearing your reactions; it's almost like watching a let's play... or like reading one I guess...
Fun fact: Let's Plays were originally text based, some of the more entertaining ones can still be found here and there in archives, they ordinarily have a lot of pictures and a good host, I'm afraid I lack qualities of both.
Hmm, did you re-include Magic Evasion? I noticed that Goblin Punch against an EvilShell seemed to have a range of 8-64!
What do you mean by "re-include"? I don't recall doing anything special in that regard...
enemy Magic Evasion and Evasion in the original game is bugged (or purposely sabotaged by the makers) to never actually be put into monster's stats. So enemies that were supposed to mitigate good amounts of damage don't because they have no actual evasion and the original game only has a defense rating max of 5 for monsters because someone got very. Very lazy.
Ok so, "putting it back in" would equate to giving some monsters magic defense indexes that included a positive percentage?
Not exactly. when Evasion and Magic Evasion are placed for monsters into their data in battle they are entered into Magic Defense and Defense and a few instructions later are replaced. So either someone at Square was really stupid not to have noticed this, or it was done purposely because of a failure to ever balance out evasion.
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Thanks! I wanted her to be comparable to the other "main fighter / secondary mage" type characters. The elemental arrows all have 0 attack; the power just comes from the bow, except for the wooden arrows (and later the yoichi arrows) which are vanilla but give an attack power boost.
That is good to know, I just picked up some Lit Arrows from a random encounter, so that would eventually be why they wouldn't give attack. That would have confused me down the line.
Since Rydia will be learning the four normally optional summons does that mean the Summon Orbs is a different range of spells for a different character?
Not as of this writing, but that is an interesting idea I hadn't thought of! Currently they've just been removed as item drops (unless I missed one by mistake or something).
The information on the range of the four spells is old, but it is still valid, but if you need me to refind and refine the info. just let me know.
Love the new animation you used for it, even down to the Summon Orb sound. There's Technically an unused Map Sprite in the Visual Effects for Summon Orbs (and Black Magic as well) but there's no way to easily activate them in a normal sense without custom code. Now Rydia has one of my favorite Summons! I like the Bomb Summon because it's not just Fire Elemental, but its damage is based upon Rydia's HP which is a neat concept. The Mist Dragon uses a similar one except without an elemental.
In this hack, Bomb is neutral (I thought it was neutral in the original too) and MIst is Holy.
It is neutral in the original... ahem, I think it is Fire-elemental in the remakes though. I know it definitely is in The After Years.
And that's Mt. Hobbs done. A good little display of the skills acquired so far. Mainly though Allure wrecks most of the enemies in the place.
Do you think it's too good? Should I perhaps lower its hit rate or raise its casting time?
I think Allure may be just a bit too good, yes. I think lowering its hit rate would be a better option than increasing its casting time. Out of curiosity what is its current hit rate? It seems near 100%.
Hmm, the Mythril Knife however may not have been the best investment, with its only difference that I can see being +5 attack from the Dagger. Mythril Staff seems a bit useless for this party setup, but it's something to hold onto for later with the +5 Will it provides.
Mythril staff casts Cure as an item (can be split or single).
Ah. I had assumed since the Staff was unchanged the Mythril Staff would be also. I stand corrected and that would have been great to know a little earlier, hehe.
Edward learned the Life Song, thank goodness! That will make getting through here on the return much more manageable, haha.
Life song has the advantage of being "free" but the disadvantage of taking its sweet time to cast, during which time the monsters are (probably) attacking you. Also the healing is proportional to the target's max HP, so the fighters will get more out of it than the mages.
If I may make a slight suggestion, perhaps the Harps could increase Edward's Will? I noticed that all of his Songs are considered White Magic and as it stands they are a little bit useless on their own at the moment. (Though I suppose the Dreamer Harp has some strategic use being able to Sleep a Foe.)
What exactly does will affect in these spells? Defense -> nothing, it's a static defense increase; Speed -> again, nothing, it's a static increase; Alure -> the chance of it working maybe, but it's already pretty high; Life -> it's a fixed amount proportional to max HP
I was unaware that Life Song was based on character's Max HP. With that knowledge... yeah, Will is pretty useless to toss onto the Harps, and really if Allure's hit rate is dropped that will give renewed use to the Lamia Harp as the Dreamer Harp trumps it heavily because of its ability to deal 100% Sleep.
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You have no idea how happy that makes me! ^_^ Though you and chillyfeez (and possibly others) deserve at least some of the credit for helping me get certain things to work.
Seeing the fruits of our labors played out in our various hacks and mods always brings me joy and you have made a wonderful showcase of the editor with this mod thus far.
And back to the game...
Before resuming the journey proper I should probably pick up the Shadow Armor for Cecil since I saw him taking a Lot of damage from those enemies in the Waterway.
Hmm, the Handaxe has been reinstated but it doesn't seem to have its +3 Strength bonus anymore. It is a little more accurate than the Hammer though.
With a bit of arranging Cecil is equipped mostly with Shadow gear and a Headband whereas Cid has the Kenpo Gi and a bunch of Mythril Armor, a Handaxe, and a Mythril Shield.
What many people may not realize about Cid by default is because he is limited to two-handed weapons he won't ever get any Defense Multipliers since Shields are needed for them. Hence why he takes a lot harder hits than Cecil or even Yang, Yang makes up for his lack of Defense Multipliers with Agility.
Made it back through the Misty Cave and onto Mist.
FireBombs in Mist are much more useful than the Bomb Fragments of the original at this time.
Ah, there's the Fire Rod.
Wow there's some really good stuff in Mist's Armor Shop (complete opposite of the originals "Bard Robe".)
I see, so this is still the classic Rune Ring.
Oh, you changed the Beret's bonuses. It now gives just Vitality, but it seems you also made it equippable by everyone so its a tempting choice for Mages and Light-Cloth users.
I'll give the GaiaGear to Rydia since she has the Rune Ring to keep her from Silence so she'll no longer need the Bard Robe.
And I am now out of money.
Looks like Rydia's Mom stored some pretty good equipment away this time around.
I see you balanced the Gold Hairpin for having a Wisdom-user in the party instead of the 10 Wisdom of the original it now gives 3 Wisdom and Will also making it useful for Porom later on.
You also balanced the Wizard Robe to give +3 Wisdom and Will instead of just 3 Will. Wizard Robe will go to Rydia then and the GaiaGear to Edward.
...And I wasted 1200 GP on the Fire Rod, haha!
Well, preparations are made, I'll have my dinner and ascend the Misty Mountains!
Whoa! You did a fantastic job with this place! You used the Cave Tileset strategically enough that it works really well and seems fully unique!
Looks like we're fighting Magnes Cave foes, a good time to do so actually.
This is where Blind really shows its worth against the foes here.
Whoa! Viking Helm from a random battle with Ogres!
Gives a bit more defense than the Mythril Helm.
Hey, a new Harp!
As far as I can tell the Fairy Harp does not have a Status Ailment to inflict... I could be wrong though. It does deal some decent physical damage though.
From Magnes Cave foes to Mt. Ordeals foes in the next area. Now the Fire Rod should show its quality.
Hmm, do Revenants have a bit more HP? After taking a Shiva, it withstood three more physical attacks.
You were even kind enough to put a Save Point here, wonderful!
Eh? A Balloon this early? I did notice you have it showing up alone. That is an interesting idea and one I toyed with, in having a formation of a much stronger foe with a rare chance to find.
Roc Baby's hmm? Well this could be interesting (Use Blind, they proceed to Petrify my party..) Run!!!
I did not expect to run into Scarmiglione up here!
That's... a rather powerful drain, much moreso than originally.
...You did not fool around when designing Scarmiglione! That Bio is some powerful stuff!
I... lost. Hah, now I know how to approach this though. Do Not Kill all 4 Ghasts or You Will Die!
Oh Scarmiglione counters Any attack with Calcify, that could be real trouble.
Whew, that was close, not so much because of Scarmiglione's attack, but because of Calcify continually. When you attacked you had to make sure it counted!
But I've played this RPG before! I'm going back, saving, switching my rows, before fighting his second form.
Imp Captains and Needler formations in a dungeon? It works well enough. It does provide some good fodder for the Dark Wave.
I noticed also that the GaiaGear doesn't prevent Calcify any longer. I imagine that was done to prevent a basic invulnerability during the Scarmiglione fight so I can't really blame your choice.
Mages know Wave? What? It dealt only 2-3 damage as well.
Oh geez! He opens with Quake! That weakened my party significantly.
He also has Demi and a physical counter. He could be rather difficult.
Ah, I accidentally still had the Dreamer Harp equipped to Edward rather than the Mythril Knife and Rune Ring, I was wondering why he was taking loads of damage from Quake.
Gah! He can Curse as well?! This is an intense battle, and one I may not have been prepared for as far as Remedy's are concerned! Which means... I may have to trek all the way back to Baron to get some.
Wow! A lucky "Help!" Got me Leviathan who ended up taking him out, I think without that I was facing a slow defeat.
This is a new scene, I like the role of informants, I especially enjoy when the governments in FFIV are Actually governments. This has been the second hack now where the Mysidian Tower of Wishes is also treated as a seat of governance.
Is the Elder's line "Truly?!" A reference to the two or three times a leader says that in the original translation of FFIV?
It went by a little quickly but did the Elder say "do the mages tell you" instead of "do as the mages tell you."? It may have just been quick reading on my part.
I enjoy this scene of the Twins seeking to learn more about the world, I somewhat imagine that this is how the conversation went when they got word that the villainous Dark Knight was back in their town seeking help.
Well that seemed a little cruel. So Leviathan does get his revenge after all (and to think I just summoned him to beat Scarmiglione) if that was indeed Leviathan, I noticed the name wasn't dropped as in the original.
I also enjoyed the reference to Warp since it is now a White Spell rather than a Black Spell it would be Porom who knows it.
Hah! Early place to get the Gaia Hammer!
No Stat bonuses from it surprisingly enough though.
Another rematch with the Roc Baby's they may have few HP but they pack a punch!
And ridden down the Misty Mountain falls! You even threw us on the side of Troia that has the Chocobo Forest you need to cross the river into Troia, great use of the area!
Dark Wave + Gaia Hammer's Quake + Kick = Good crowd clearing.
Because of this combo the Gaia Hammer is infinitely more useful than the (I'm around for three more battles!) original.
I was one level away from Rydia having learned Ifrit in the Misty Mountains, heh.
And here we are at Troia.
Cursed Weapons? That's a new one to me.
The little boy in the Black Chocobo Farm says the title of a book "Stars of Dream".
Since I'm in a village...
Buy 99 Remedies!
Troia has a nice selection of armor from the various shops we've come across from Fabul to Mist.
The Fairy Harp and Gaia Hammer are on sale here in case you didn't pick them up in the Misty Mountains, good idea.
Doesn't look like much has changed in the "Cafe" I'll pick up a Pass when I have enough GP though.
The Black Chocobo's appear to be missing from the Northern Forest, I wonder if they appear now on a Flag basis...
So... let's go to Troia Castle!
Oh... Oh that's unexpected.
Golbez?!
Tellah! You hero for the ages!!
Now that was awesome. I also noticed that Meteo was a White Magic now, I suppose that goes along with it being classified as a Time Magic, I wonder if that means a certain Archer will be learning it in the future...
Tellah's quip back to Cecil is fantastic. "I was, wasn't I?"
Aw... I'm losing Edward for now? Ah well. He was a great character though. I loved what you did with him.
A Tome with every known spell? I'll keep a look out!
I did noticed you used the "hooded monster" sprite for the Shadow Dragon, out of curiosity would a changed palette "dancer's leg in water" make any kind of convincing Dragon?
Two of the Clerics still say "What's that?!" as if responding to Kain's voice. The rest have appropriate dialogue, smart way to segue into that. I also like this line of reasoning, a peaceful country doesn't want any trouble so they hand over their crystal for the moment to a party that they can see has kept the Crystal of Water safe from Golbez.
Well with that wrapped up now am I hitching a ride on a Black Chocobo?
Now I am free to fly anywhere I like!
While I'm in the area I may as well check out Mt. Ordeals and Mysidia.
Fire blocking me at Mt. Ordeals...
Hah! Drop of a Thunder Rod from Mini-Mages that could be useful early on.
When you go to Mysidia there is a neat introspection scene, but it is displayed with whatever character you have up front. Perhaps that is intended. I enjoy that "Suspicion" continues to play even after the event is done.
Dark Wave is great for taking out the trash, and now that I see this I have to wonder why they decided to not replace it with any sort of equivalency. It's dealing pretty good damage here at Level 21 it is dealing 180-220 damage to all foes, which is more than respectable.
So let's head to Eblan then.
Did not see this scene coming so soon! Edge returning to try and take the fight to the enemy is very much in his character and Rubicante's aimed questioning suits his character well.
For the first time in FFIV history Edge now joins at a level Higher than the rest of the party! Shock of shocks!
I'm glad I held onto that Mythril Dagger...
That's right, he's a respectable Wisdom-user in this, rather than just novelty skills.
Wha? Enemies in Eblan Castle? I mean, I did the same thing in my hack as well, since it makes a good deal of sense, still caught me by surprise though.
StaleMan dealt Massive damage to Cecil anywhere from 400-500, but only 20-80 to Edge who was in the Backrow, hmm... the GaiaGear doesn't protect against Giants does it? I noticed the GaiaHammer dealt really good damage against him so you may have turned the StaleMan into a Robot or change the Gaia Hammer's race advantage. And to think I was about to put Cid in the backrow for Edge in the front.
The Flame Blade! That is a worthy prize!
Oh, a healing pot in Eblan itself? That is nice to know.
Ah right... Stalemen are weak to Fire and the Gaia Hammer is Fire Elemental, that makes sense then.
You have the Flame gear stashed away in Eblan... that makes a great deal of sense when I think about it.
Stoneman is another devestating foe. Seemingly with the same resistances as Staleman.
It would seem the FlameDog's stats and rewards have been drastically decreased to compensate for where they are encountered. Again, it is a smart idea to put fire creatures in a place that was destroyed by Fire.
Eblan Castle Round 2!
Oh that's neat. Edge joins the team with 5 Shuriken. Nice touch.
I'll probably head back to Kaipo though, if given the opportunity pick up 99 Daggers for throwing since they deal 300-400 per throw.
Landed Curse on Staleman and his 400 damage decreases to... 1. Might just have been RNG though.
Oh god! It's Rubicante! What is he doing at the bottom of Eblan?!
Fire 2 is reasonable... Glare is still a killer!
Oh I see... those Fire2 Counters start to add up, and fast!
It only took like a literal six tries, but I managed to time a Shiva to hit him when his cloak was down!
This... literally leads me to the Eblan Cave with no way out. I... did not expect to be trapped here. I wonder what else I missed on the Overworld...
Finally! A Shop that sells Hi-Potions!
Judo? I imagine that's the renamed Black Belt?
You read my mind on the Daggers! This weapon shop is perfect for Edge (which you'd expect it to be)
Blind Dagger, always nice to see new items.
And you added a save point, wonderful...
Well the plot continues to thicken, but it is very late and this seems a good of a stopping point as any, I've dealt with Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione, and Rubicante, and of the original four all that remains is Barabariccia.
Once again, amazing work.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 10, 2015, 08:57:25 AM
Not exactly. when Evasion and Magic Evasion are placed for monsters into their data in battle they are entered into Magic Defense and Defense and a few instructions later are replaced. So either someone at Square was really stupid not to have noticed this, or it was done purposely because of a failure to ever balance out evasion.
Ok, in that case, the answer to your original question is, no I did not re-include magic evasion. I didn't touch the battle mechanics in any way; only data.
I think Allure may be just a bit too good, yes. I think lowering its hit rate would be a better option than increasing its casting time. Out of curiosity what is its current hit rate? It seems near 100%.
Upon inspection, yes it is 100... What do you think would be good? 50? 60? 75? 80?
Ah. I had assumed since the Staff was unchanged the Mythril Staff would be also. I stand corrected and that would have been great to know a little earlier, hehe.
The equipment in general has be re-done from the ground up. Things may have similar names and happen to have similar stats but that is not due to "keeping" them per se. When I started I erased/renamed every single item based on what I wanted to include (from this game and other FFs) and then did up what I thought to be appropriate stats, based on what makes sense to me flavor-wise as well as what it should be for where you are in the game when you are likely to get it. So in general, if you see a piece of equipment and say "aha I know what that is" you may be right or you may not. It also could be that whatever differences you do see are not the only ones ^_^
Seeing the fruits of our labors played out in our various hacks and mods always brings me joy and you have made a wonderful showcase of the editor with this mod thus far.
Hmm, the Handaxe has been reinstated but it doesn't seem to have its +3 Strength bonus anymore. It is a little more accurate than the Hammer though.
With a bit of arranging Cecil is equipped mostly with Shadow gear and a Headband whereas Cid has the Kenpo Gi and a bunch of Mythril Armor, a Handaxe, and a Mythril Shield.
What many people may not realize about Cid by default is because he is limited to two-handed weapons he won't ever get any Defense Multipliers since Shields are needed for them. Hence why he takes a lot harder hits than Cecil or even Yang, Yang makes up for his lack of Defense Multipliers with Agility.
I did know that actually; I made sure Cid's two main weapon types gave him an interesting choice. Huge damage from hammer but takes more damage, glass cannon style; or smaller damage from axe but takes less damage, more of a tank. Most characters I tried to make sure they had multiple interesting builds.
Made it back through the Misty Cave and onto Mist.
FireBombs in Mist are much more useful than the Bomb Fragments of the original at this time.
FireBomb in this one is HP-based so it should be about equally useful throughout the game. That way I was able to ditch the other attack items and just have one of each for a much less cluttered inventory. I was even thinking of having the player start with one FireBomb, one Lit-Bolt, and two Ice-Balls to give the idea that Cecil originally had two of each but he used a FireBomb and Lit-Bolt in the battle in the intro. ^_^
Whoa! You did a fantastic job with this place! You used the Cave Tileset strategically enough that it works really well and seems fully unique!
Thanks! The only slight detail(s) that are off are that the mist doesn't animate at the border of the map, and that the mist becomes opaque when tenting. Actually when the screen tint changes at all, the mist becomes opaque, that's why I removed the tinting from the Scarmiglione scene.
Looks like we're fighting Magnes Cave foes, a good time to do so actually.
There's a mishmash of foes on the mountain. Notably, you should see your share of imps, bombs, birds, and mage/flayer enemies. The summoners learned to summon those as opposed to other regular monsters because they were the monsters in the nearby mountain. ^_^
As far as I can tell the Fairy Harp does not have a Status Ailment to inflict... I could be wrong though. It does deal some decent physical damage though.
You are correct. It also deals extra damage to ogres, or anything else that's considered "giant".
I did not expect to run into Scarmiglione up here!
That's... a rather powerful drain, much moreso than originally.
...You did not fool around when designing Scarmiglione! That Bio is some powerful stuff!
I... lost. Hah, now I know how to approach this though. Do Not Kill all 4 Ghasts or You Will Die!
What, he likes mountains with giant bridges! ^_^
Anyway I tried to make him a litte more interesting and challenging as well as more thematic so it feels like you're fighting the Earth Fiend, not the Dark Fiend, especially since that actually is a monster later on. So he uses things like Quake, Petrify/Calcify, Demi (Gravity), etc.
Oh Scarmiglione counters Any attack with Calcify, that could be real trouble.
Whew, that was close, not so much because of Scarmiglione's attack, but because of Calcify continually. When you attacked you had to make sure it counted!
Cid's Rage can get him to hit pretty hard, but it means he won't be available for remedy-ing if needed.
But I've played this RPG before! I'm going back, saving, switching my rows, before fighting his second form.
Imp Captains and Needler formations in a dungeon? It works well enough. It does provide some good fodder for the Dark Wave.
I noticed also that the GaiaGear doesn't prevent Calcify any longer. I imagine that was done to prevent a basic invulnerability during the Scarmiglione fight so I can't really blame your choice.
Mages know Wave? What? It dealt only 2-3 damage as well.
That was a recent change I haven't had the opportunity to test. They seem like water creatures so I wanted them to have a water attack. If it's only dealing 2-3 then maybe they should cast something else. Big Wave is probably too strong, especially when they show up in pairs... I'll think about it.
Oh geez! He opens with Quake! That weakened my party significantly.
He also has Demi and a physical counter. He could be rather difficult.
Ah, I accidentally still had the Dreamer Harp equipped to Edward rather than the Mythril Knife and Rune Ring, I was wondering why he was taking loads of damage from Quake.
If you time it right, Ed can just hide from the quakes (I don't know about the first one but definitely the subsequent ones).
Gah! He can Curse as well?! This is an intense battle, and one I may not have been prepared for as far as Remedy's are concerned! Which means... I may have to trek all the way back to Baron to get some.
Like I said, items are definitely a thing in this. Also I know it would have been helpful to know before this, but Wooden Staff heals calcify and petrify.
This is a new scene, I like the role of informants, I especially enjoy when the governments in FFIV are Actually governments. This has been the second hack now where the Mysidian Tower of Wishes is also treated as a seat of governance.
Is the Elder's line "Truly?!" A reference to the two or three times a leader says that in the original translation of FFIV?
Not specifically, but I did try to get characters' new dialogue to sound like them as best I could.
It went by a little quickly but did the Elder say "do the mages tell you" instead of "do as the mages tell you."? It may have just been quick reading on my part.
It wasn't your imagination, good catch! Fixed!
On that note, remind me to update the patch again soon. There are some things (mostly near the end) that were dummied/imped out for debugging/testing purposes that have to be put back in!
I enjoy this scene of the Twins seeking to learn more about the world, I somewhat imagine that this is how the conversation went when they got word that the villainous Dark Knight was back in their town seeking help.
Well that seemed a little cruel. So Leviathan does get his revenge after all (and to think I just summoned him to beat Scarmiglione) if that was indeed Leviathan, I noticed the name wasn't dropped as in the original.
It's not Leviathan. It's just "a sea monster". I always thought it was kinda silly in the original how he violently trashes your boat for no reason, leaves everyone but Rydia to presumably drown, but then you meet him later and he's all civilized and friendly and like "oh yeah summon me whenever you want".
And ridden down the Misty Mountain falls! You even threw us on the side of Troia that has the Chocobo Forest you need to cross the river into Troia, great use of the area!
Thanks! It is a pretty vast area that had no use in the original. Despite not having any changes to the overworld, I did my best to make different uses of it. A big part of that though is not just giving out airships willy nilly 1/4 of the way through the game.
I think she says "Cursed or Blood items"; usually armor is cursed and weapons are blood, but the idea is the same, they absorb damage at the cost of lowering your stats.
Now that was awesome. I also noticed that Meteo was a White Magic now, I suppose that goes along with it being classified as a Time Magic, I wonder if that means a certain Archer will be learning it in the future...
Thanks! I'm particularly proud of that scene. I figure by now the player has forgotten all about Tellah's existence. Also I wanted to make Golbez super intimidating, like at this point trying to take him on directly is just suicide. Even Tellah needs Meteo to put a dent in him... and even then, a dent is all it is; it just makes him retreat.
Tellah's quip back to Cecil is fantastic. "I was, wasn't I?"
Aw... I'm losing Edward for now? Ah well. He was a great character though. I loved what you did with him.
Thanks! Since you've already seen and reacted to the "eight fiend battle" I guess it's no spoiler to say that I think you'll also like what I did with "Edward 2" if your choices take you to him.
I did noticed you used the "hooded monster" sprite for the Shadow Dragon, out of curiosity would a changed palette "dancer's leg in water" make any kind of convincing Dragon?
Maybe, but it won't work for other practical reasons which I'll explain once you've finished the game.
Two of the Clerics still say "What's that?!" as if responding to Kain's voice. The rest have appropriate dialogue, smart way to segue into that. I also like this line of reasoning, a peaceful country doesn't want any trouble so they hand over their crystal for the moment to a party that they can see has kept the Crystal of Water safe from Golbez.
It's funny, the character animations are all the same, only the dialogue is different in that scene (what, I was lazy and it still works) ^_^ Anyway I fixed that message on my copy.
Well with that wrapped up now am I hitching a ride on a Black Chocobo?
Now I am free to fly anywhere I like!
Almost. I don't think you can access the Kaipo/Waterfall/Damcyan area. I guess you could walk back over Mt. Hobs... Also you can't access places needing a hovercraft like the Mythril Mine or the cave next to Eblan Castle.
While I'm in the area I may as well check out Mt. Ordeals and Mysidia.
Fire blocking me at Mt. Ordeals...
Hah! Drop of a Thunder Rod from Mini-Mages that could be useful early on.
When you go to Mysidia there is a neat introspection scene, but it is displayed with whatever character you have up front. Perhaps that is intended. I enjoy that "Suspicion" continues to play even after the event is done.
It's "Sad 2" but yeah, it evokes the "washed up on shore" scene in the original where the music plays after the event is over and you're headed to town. Anyway I fixed that detail. I sure am glad you seem to be going around with different party leaders! It's something I have a notorious neglect of doing, and as a result I often forget to put "change character graphic" into the events that definitely need it.
Dark Wave is great for taking out the trash, and now that I see this I have to wonder why they decided to not replace it with any sort of equivalency. It's dealing pretty good damage here at Level 21 it is dealing 180-220 damage to all foes, which is more than respectable.
Wait til you get the Deathbringer haha... (if you get it)
Wha? Enemies in Eblan Castle? I mean, I did the same thing in my hack as well, since it makes a good deal of sense, still caught me by surprise though.
The impression I got from the original is that Eblan was ransacked quite some time ago and you're just exploring the remnants of the castle. In this one, due to skipping the whole leviathan/mysidia thing you're intervening a lot earlier, so they're still kind of in the midst of trashing the place.
StaleMan dealt Massive damage to Cecil anywhere from 400-500, but only 20-80 to Edge who was in the Backrow, hmm... the GaiaGear doesn't protect against Giants does it? I noticed the GaiaHammer dealt really good damage against him so you may have turned the StaleMan into a Robot or change the Gaia Hammer's race advantage. And to think I was about to put Cid in the backrow for Edge in the front.
GaiaGear is good vs Giants, Slimes, and Zombies, and is resistant to Air. StaleMan and his palette-swaps are considered "constructs" (I expanded the concept of Robot to include anything that seems like something normally inanimate that was automated or animated in some way, such as golems), thus Gaia Hammer being a Hammer deals extra damage to "constructs".
Oh that's neat. Edge joins the team with 5 Shuriken. Nice touch.
Thanks! It's an awkward party for putting a second person in back, though everyone has something useful they can do back there. Cecil can cast spells or Dark Wave, Cid can Quake things, Yang can Kick, but Edge seems to be the most logical option. Thus since he'd probably be throwing a lot as opposed to attacking from back there I figured I'd start the player with some ammo.
Oh I see... those Fire2 Counters start to add up, and fast!
It only took like a literal six tries, but I managed to time a Shiva to hit him when his cloak was down!
If you cast Fire on him, he casts Raise on your party. Useful to know for future. Just be aware that apparently unconscious characters attempt to evade an enemy's Raise spell so it may not always work.
This... literally leads me to the Eblan Cave with no way out. I... did not expect to be trapped here. I wonder what else I missed on the Overworld...
You could reload your save... in any case since it's not documented I'm guessing you missed Mythril/Silvera town and attempting to enter Cave Magnes, but I think that's all other than revisiting old places like Baron or Fabul.
Well the plot continues to thicken, but it is very late and this seems a good of a stopping point as any, I've dealt with Cagnazzo, Scarmiglione, and Rubicante, and of the original four all that remains is Barabariccia.
Once again, amazing work.
Thanks! Some exciting scenes ahead (at least, I hope you find them so). Glad you're enjoying playing; I'm certainly enjoying hearing your reactions ^_^
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 10, 2015, 08:57:56 PM
Not exactly. when Evasion and Magic Evasion are placed for monsters into their data in battle they are entered into Magic Defense and Defense and a few instructions later are replaced. So either someone at Square was really stupid not to have noticed this, or it was done purposely because of a failure to ever balance out evasion.
Ok, in that case, the answer to your original question is, no I did not re-include magic evasion. I didn't touch the battle mechanics in any way; only data.
Alright. Got it. Out of curiosity would you have an option to re-implement Evasion into the game? Since it Is referenced in the Enemy Data after all, it would seem a rather strange thing to leave as is. (I wouldn't suggest to automatically fix it because they didn't bother balancing Evasion at all, but to have it as an option in "Features" could be desirable) It's literally a two byte change.
I think Allure may be just a bit too good, yes. I think lowering its hit rate would be a better option than increasing its casting time. Out of curiosity what is its current hit rate? It seems near 100%.
Upon inspection, yes it is 100... What do you think would be good? 50? 60? 75? 80?
I think 75% is good enough, too low and it's worthless. 75% chance seems fair to the player.
Ah. I had assumed since the Staff was unchanged the Mythril Staff would be also. I stand corrected and that would have been great to know a little earlier, hehe.
The equipment in general has be re-done from the ground up. Things may have similar names and happen to have similar stats but that is not due to "keeping" them per se. When I started I erased/renamed every single item based on what I wanted to include (from this game and other FFs) and then did up what I thought to be appropriate stats, based on what makes sense to me flavor-wise as well as what it should be for where you are in the game when you are likely to get it. So in general, if you see a piece of equipment and say "aha I know what that is" you may be right or you may not. It also could be that whatever differences you do see are not the only ones ^_^
A very good point, I will try to be more observant from hereon out.
Looks like we're fighting Magnes Cave foes, a good time to do so actually.
There's a mishmash of foes on the mountain. Notably, you should see your share of imps, bombs, birds, and mage/flayer enemies. The summoners learned to summon those as opposed to other regular monsters because they were the monsters in the nearby mountain. ^_^
That is an interesting detail! You should have an NPC mention that in Mist. (I always found that guy who knows that Odin is sleeping under Baron as a bit of a strange thing to say)
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Anyway I tried to make him a litte more interesting and challenging as well as more thematic so it feels like you're fighting the Earth Fiend, not the Dark Fiend, especially since that actually is a monster later on. So he uses things like Quake, Petrify/Calcify, Demi (Gravity), etc.
You've done a worthy job as such! He is much more inline with his element and much more challenging.
Oh geez! He opens with Quake! That weakened my party significantly.
He also has Demi and a physical counter. He could be rather difficult.
Ah, I accidentally still had the Dreamer Harp equipped to Edward rather than the Mythril Knife and Rune Ring, I was wondering why he was taking loads of damage from Quake.
If you time it right, Ed can just hide from the quakes (I don't know about the first one but definitely the subsequent ones). [/quote]
That is a really good strategy, I hadn't thought of that, but it's rather easy to see when its coming up in his pattern.
Gah! He can Curse as well?! This is an intense battle, and one I may not have been prepared for as far as Remedy's are concerned! Which means... I may have to trek all the way back to Baron to get some.
Like I said, items are definitely a thing in this. Also I know it would have been helpful to know before this, but Wooden Staff heals calcify and petrify.
I wonder if more things like that should be mentioned by an NPC somewhere, with the Rods its pretty clear what's doing what. With the Status Healing Staffs, it's all the same animation so its very difficult by sight to see what is being changed. Maybe have a White Mage in Baron mention it?
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On that note, remind me to update the patch again soon. There are some things (mostly near the end) that were dummied/imped out for debugging/testing purposes that have to be put back in!
I'll remind you, I suppose reaching the moon would be a good place to remind you.
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It's not Leviathan. It's just "a sea monster". I always thought it was kinda silly in the original how he violently trashes your boat for no reason, leaves everyone but Rydia to presumably drown, but then you meet him later and he's all civilized and friendly and like "oh yeah summon me whenever you want".
That never made sense to me. The original game doesn't provide a reason that Leviathan spirited away Rydia. It feels like a gaping plot hole. I've head-canoned it that he was trying to protect Rydia from Golbez.
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Thanks! It is a pretty vast area that had no use in the original. Despite not having any changes to the overworld, I did my best to make different uses of it. A big part of that though is not just giving out airships willy nilly 1/4 of the way through the game.
Haha! Well said, it was always a flaw in the original that it just made the world seem so small as you were barely doing any fighting any longer as you were just zipping from location to location.
Now that was awesome. I also noticed that Meteo was a White Magic now, I suppose that goes along with it being classified as a Time Magic, I wonder if that means a certain Archer will be learning it in the future...
Thanks! I'm particularly proud of that scene. I figure by now the player has forgotten all about Tellah's existence. Also I wanted to make Golbez super intimidating, like at this point trying to take him on directly is just suicide. Even Tellah needs Meteo to put a dent in him... and even then, a dent is all it is; it just makes him retreat.
I agree, it does make Golbez out to be absurdly powerful.
Wha? Enemies in Eblan Castle? I mean, I did the same thing in my hack as well, since it makes a good deal of sense, still caught me by surprise though.
The impression I got from the original is that Eblan was ransacked quite some time ago and you're just exploring the remnants of the castle. In this one, due to skipping the whole leviathan/mysidia thing you're intervening a lot earlier, so they're still kind of in the midst of trashing the place.
Yes, I couldn't quite tell but was the place less beat up than it normally is?
StaleMan dealt Massive damage to Cecil anywhere from 400-500, but only 20-80 to Edge who was in the Backrow, hmm... the GaiaGear doesn't protect against Giants does it? I noticed the GaiaHammer dealt really good damage against him so you may have turned the StaleMan into a Robot or change the Gaia Hammer's race advantage. And to think I was about to put Cid in the backrow for Edge in the front.
GaiaGear is good vs Giants, Slimes, and Zombies, and is resistant to Air. StaleMan and his palette-swaps are considered "constructs" (I expanded the concept of Robot to include anything that seems like something normally inanimate that was automated or animated in some way, such as golems), thus Gaia Hammer being a Hammer deals extra damage to "constructs".
Now That is important information to have. It also explains why you would choose to equip Cecil with it. The idea to make Robot-type into Constructs is also well-founded since there are very few robots until the Tower of Babil and Giant.
Oh that's neat. Edge joins the team with 5 Shuriken. Nice touch.
Thanks! It's an awkward party for putting a second person in back, though everyone has something useful they can do back there. Cecil can cast spells or Dark Wave, Cid can Quake things, Yang can Kick, but Edge seems to be the most logical option. Thus since he'd probably be throwing a lot as opposed to attacking from back there I figured I'd start the player with some ammo.
I'll probably head back to Kaipo though, if given the opportunity pick up 99 Daggers for throwing since they deal 300-400 per throw.
Is that more than the Shurikens? It shouldn't be, based on their stats... Shuriken has 32 Atk, Dagger only has 12... how is throw damage computed?
Not picking up a Wightslayer to huck at something? j/k ^_^
Nice FFIII reference there at the end, heh. I had assumed since the Daggers were more expensive (120 compared to 100) that they were stronger than Shurikens... so I just wasted 12000 Gil, my own fault really I didn't test out the power of Shurikens. The Throw formula is very simple... Level x Weapon Power + 0,99. That's it. That means Shuriken will do around 800 damage a Throw. I wonder if that's a Bit too much especially at the 100 GP Price.
Oh I see... those Fire2 Counters start to add up, and fast!
It only took like a literal six tries, but I managed to time a Shiva to hit him when his cloak was down!
If you cast Fire on him, he casts Raise on your party. Useful to know for future. Just be aware that apparently unconscious characters attempt to evade an enemy's Raise spell so it may not always work.
This... literally leads me to the Eblan Cave with no way out. I... did not expect to be trapped here. I wonder what else I missed on the Overworld...
You could reload your save... in any case since it's not documented I'm guessing you missed Mythril/Silvera town and attempting to enter Cave Magnes, but I think that's all other than revisiting old places like Baron or Fabul.
I was wondering it it may be best for Edge to mention that he needs to go back to the hideout and tells the party where it is. It will give the experienced player the idea that the castle basement will not lead to the exit for one and two Edge just says he's looking for Rubicante. There's not much hint on where to go at that particular juncture. I thought I was still on a treasure raid, not progressing the plot, since knowing FFIV I thought the next part of the plot would be to go to Magnes Cave (to possibly store the crystals for safekeeping or some such) I *probably* should have guessed something was up in Eblan though so it may just be my lack of attention.
I'll be sure to go there once I get out of Eblan though.
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Useful to know for the upcoming dungeon, Ashura (the sword) is holy.
That is Very useful to know! I would not have guessed that since the Katanas sometimes double as Dark Swords in some games. (Even in FFIV the Murasame is referred to as "The Blade of Black".
And back to the game...
First point of business is to sell those Daggers back and buy 100 Shurikens...
The Judo Suit is intriguing so I'll pick up one (and be poor from thereon out)
Raises Strength and Vitality by 5 and provides some decent defense, rather nice! Very costly, but worth it.
And onward we go!
I did not expect that departure point for Yang, but the way you set it up makes Perfect sense! I like how you're dismissing the party members in less than grandiose terms rather than the original's "everybody dies!"
A smart plan as well showing Edge as a decent tactician.
I think the music changes throughout the event were also very well chosen.
Geez, those Bloodbats are even more annoying now... they actually Absorb your HP now at a more than decent tick.
Skuldier's are as tricky as they ever were. I did notice you changed their Lit-2 to Fire-2 though. I suppose to give some repose to the players equipped with the new Flame armor?
These encounters are brutal! I better go back and heal and take this bit by bit.
Tornado actually deals Very nicely with those Bats.
Shurikens at 800 Damage a throw takes care of pretty much everything.
Ah, Cecil learned Berserk! That should make him that much more useful.
Does the Flame Sword also deal x4 Damage to Undead? Because Cecil went from dealing maybe 300 with the Coral Sword to 2000+ with the Flame Sword.
Two Stalemen... yikes, that was a bit of trouble. But I managed to prevail.
Did not expect to turn up on this side of the Tower of Babi...
Oh! That's because this isn't the Tower of Babil. It's Zot. At least the map is. I was wondering why the change in animation, now I know.
This locked door... in Combat Boost there were originally plans to revisit the fallen Tower of Zot and I toyed with many ideas and one of them was a door at the entrance right in this very spot. I'm curious to see what's behind it!
The Angel Robe, hmm? Raises Vitality, Wisdom and Will by 5, very, very nice!
It seems as if the Power Staff still does Berserk.
Puppets are now part of the Construct race, a good call.
Tornado deals very nicely with the Slimes.
My first Cabin from a band of Black Lizards and Swordman.
Blind is again, very useful in dealing with large groups that whittle down the party.
Running out of healing items (outside of the good stuff...) all around. I barely made it to the save point.
Another Hairpin... hah. I guess if you missed the one in Rydia's House this is a nice replacement.
Ah, so this is where the Viking Helm was originally supposed to be obtained.
Yes! Rydia Finally learned Sylph! Another means of mass healing! (If it hasn't been nerfed)
Wow, that Mythril Hammer is nice! Technically it seems as if the Gaia Hammer and Mythril Hammer were switched stat wise.
Sylph Costs 00, seems to have a longer charge time, but deals decent enough damage and recovers a good amount. Still a solid choice.
Giant's Gloves? I didn't expect to see these in a chest!
With all of this in hand, let's head further on!
Haha! Some things never change...
Sandy falls in two Shuriken Shots and a hit from Ramuh...
Mindy revives her, but a little too late, Cindy and Mindy both fall in the next hits from Ramuh (after having damage piled up by the others)
Sandy uses Comet when alone which deals pretty good damage to the party, but its enough to shrug off at this point.
And she's down. Compared to Rubicante and Scarmiglione they didn't seem as difficult. It didn't help that their patterns got a bit messed up with dead Sandy being unable to cast Reflect so Cindy was hitting Mindy with spells.
After you defeat the Magus Sisters, the Tower of Zot music starts to play instead of Babil.
Oh, Secret Agent Kain! This plot just gets better and better!
Whoa, well so much for that plan.
What?! Wow, you weren't kidding about Rosa being a lot more competent than in the original.
You can really see the effects of the GaiaGear (And Angel Robe?) here against Barbariccia when she uses Tornado.
And I lost... I had one Hi-Potion going into it and my timing with Sylph was off, I guess I'll have to be more careful with my timing.
I did forget to mention I liked how when Cecil is running towards "Rosa" Kain is still in constant motion, very good use of that "simulataneous" event instruction.
...Wha? Is Sylph now Air Elemental? It dealt great damage against Barbariccia and recovered a more than decent amount. That is So neat that you made that a viable strategy here.
Whew, much better this time around. I did have to use my 1 Hi-Potion because of the Weak she got off near the start, but after that I managed to time everything correctly and I'm seeing in this mod that Timing against bosses is Paramount to success. And it provides a fully unique feel to this mod.
Kain's set up is interesting, protection from Flame, and a Thunder spear to deal with those weak to Thunder since the Coral Sword is a bit weak at this point. Well thought out.
And that's all four crystals and all four of the first round of fiends!
Hmm, the Ice Lizard when alone just tried to cast Fire on me...
Ice Beast's Blizzard is now really read only dealing 40-80 damage.
Before opening that door where Rosa is, let's save the game back in Eblan Caves...
Ah hey, the Crystal Room, neat!
Haha, I see you implied that strange reference in the original translation that Barbariccia enjoyed seeing Rosa tied up and used that in this plot.
Wha? We're trying to one-up Golbez to get to the moon before him? This is very unexpected!
Oh, placing the crystals into their altars like this, is cool!
Graphic Palette Bug after placing the crystals and going back to the middle of the room.
Heh, Rydia is a bit of a wisecracker. It's quite adorable.
Did not expect to be going to the Underworld in this fashion. I am still confused on what Kain's goals are at this moment, but I think that's sort of the plot you've been leading up to.
I'm still not sure how we lost Rydia when we all fell, unless she wasn't standing on part of the Trapdoor...
Though I love how you've balanced this plot so far! You made Rydia into the de facto main character, as far as the Fiends were concerned.
You should be learning Ramuh about the time you reach Cagnazzo, you should be learning Ifrit just about when you reach Scarmiglione, you've already known Shiva for a long time, and you'll be learning Sylph just as you reach Barbariccia.
Especially in the Barbariccia fight her usefulness is in sync with Kain's own for this battle.
And I must mention how you made Edge the star of the show from Eblan through the Tower of Babil with his ability to deal Massive amounts of damage he carries the team unlike the original game where he feels like a hanger-on for a rather long time, from Tornado in dealing with the Bats and Flans to a Fire2 here and there to deal with some of the more vulnerable enemies he was ever useful.
Rydia did leave with a lot of good stuff though, oh well. I'll make do.
I sure wish I kept a bow now...
And this seems like an ideal place to call it! All of these twists and turns continue to astound me, but I do have a few suggestions...
Since the Tower of Zot is presumably not appearing you may want to change the layout in the map editor of what is now essentially the first six floors of the Tower of Babil (you can leave the sixth floor and Central Command alone though). I somewhat imagine you planned to do that since this is just an Alpha after all.
Your skills continue to impress me though and I cannot wait to proceed onwards! (Though I do kind of like this chapter format I've been doing, hehe)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 11, 2015, 05:47:39 PM
Alright. Got it. Out of curiosity would you have an option to re-implement Evasion into the game? Since it Is referenced in the Enemy Data after all, it would seem a rather strange thing to leave as is. (I wouldn't suggest to automatically fix it because they didn't bother balancing Evasion at all, but to have it as an option in "Features" could be desirable) It's literally a two byte change.
That is an interesting detail! You should have an NPC mention that in Mist. (I always found that guy who knows that Odin is sleeping under Baron as a bit of a strange thing to say)
I wonder if more things like that should be mentioned by an NPC somewhere, with the Rods its pretty clear what's doing what. With the Status Healing Staffs, it's all the same animation so its very difficult by sight to see what is being changed. Maybe have a White Mage in Baron mention it?
Nice FFIII reference there at the end, heh. I had assumed since the Daggers were more expensive (120 compared to 100) that they were stronger than Shurikens... so I just wasted 12000 Gil, my own fault really I didn't test out the power of Shurikens. The Throw formula is very simple... Level x Weapon Power + 0,99. That's it. That means Shuriken will do around 800 damage a Throw. I wonder if that's a Bit too much especially at the 100 GP Price.
I guess my logic is more like, the shurikens are for throwing. The other weapons can be thrown, but really you wouldn't want to buy a ton of them specifically for that. And don't worry, the regular shuriken will get pretty useless pretty soon.
I was wondering it it may be best for Edge to mention that he needs to go back to the hideout and tells the party where it is. It will give the experienced player the idea that the castle basement will not lead to the exit for one and two Edge just says he's looking for Rubicante. There's not much hint on where to go at that particular juncture. I thought I was still on a treasure raid, not progressing the plot, since knowing FFIV I thought the next part of the plot would be to go to Magnes Cave (to possibly store the crystals for safekeeping or some such) I *probably* should have guessed something was up in Eblan though so it may just be my lack of attention.
I'll be sure to go there once I get out of Eblan though.
Good point, I'll be sure to put in something like that.
That is Very useful to know! I would not have guessed that since the Katanas sometimes double as Dark Swords in some games. (Even in FFIV the Murasame is referred to as "The Blade of Black".
Depends on the particular katana in this one. Ashura is holy, Kotetsu is dark, Murakumo is Air, and I think the rest are neutral.
I did not expect that departure point for Yang, but the way you set it up makes Perfect sense! I like how you're dismissing the party members in less than grandiose terms rather than the original's "everybody dies!"
"Dies"... I wouldn't have even minded if they actually died, but it gets old when everyone who seemed dead just... wasn't... and for like no real reason other than "yay so and so is back"
A smart plan as well showing Edge as a decent tactician.
Thanks! It also shows that Cecil doesn't always have to be "the leader" at all times, even if he is the main character. He knows when to defer to the expertise of others.
Skuldier's are as tricky as they ever were. I did notice you changed their Lit-2 to Fire-2 though. I suppose to give some repose to the players equipped with the new Flame armor?
Exactly. No sense giving the player a bunch of stuff that's only useful for like one battle.
Yes! Rydia Finally learned Sylph! Another means of mass healing! (If it hasn't been nerfed)
Sylph Costs 00, seems to have a longer charge time, but deals decent enough damage and recovers a good amount. Still a solid choice.
I wish I could make it cost a positive amount. Then I could reduce the casting time to something more reasonable... but I did my best to work with what I was given.
And she's down. Compared to Rubicante and Scarmiglione they didn't seem as difficult. It didn't help that their patterns got a bit messed up with dead Sandy being unable to cast Reflect so Cindy was hitting Mindy with spells.
The sisters are pretty much unchanged and thus pretty much a gimmie. I might beef 'em up or I might not. They're sort of a tutorial on Reflect, since this is really the first time you see it in action as there's no Baigain battle, and no Tellah to have the player toy with it. Of course, the main target audience would know the ins and outs of reflect from having played the original game, but whatever.
Oh, Secret Agent Kain! This plot just gets better and better!
Thanks! I wasn't sure how you'd react to that particular change. I never liked the whole "hypnosis" theme in the original. Kinda cheapened the baddies a little IMO.
I did forget to mention I liked how when Cecil is running towards "Rosa" Kain is still in constant motion, very good use of that "simulataneous" event instruction.
...Wha? Is Sylph now Air Elemental? It dealt great damage against Barbariccia and recovered a more than decent amount. That is So neat that you made that a viable strategy here.
Whew, much better this time around. I did have to use my 1 Hi-Potion because of the Weak she got off near the start, but after that I managed to time everything correctly and I'm seeing in this mod that Timing against bosses is Paramount to success. And it provides a fully unique feel to this mod.
Kain's set up is interesting, protection from Flame, and a Thunder spear to deal with those weak to Thunder since the Coral Sword is a bit weak at this point. Well thought out.
Thanks! Incidentally, Kain also can't use swords in this one, not sure if you noticed. His choices are Spear or Axe.
Wha? We're trying to one-up Golbez to get to the moon before him? This is very unexpected!
Oh, placing the crystals into their altars like this, is cool!
Thanks! I really wanted the player to have a sense of excitement and satisfaction of having collected "all" four crystals and putting them into their chambers and stuff... It seems to have done it's job I take it?
Heh, Rydia is a bit of a wisecracker. It's quite adorable.
Did not expect to be going to the Underworld in this fashion. I am still confused on what Kain's goals are at this moment, but I think that's sort of the plot you've been leading up to.
You should be learning Ramuh about the time you reach Cagnazzo, you should be learning Ifrit just about when you reach Scarmiglione, you've already known Shiva for a long time, and you'll be learning Sylph just as you reach Barbariccia.
Especially in the Barbariccia fight her usefulness is in sync with Kain's own for this battle.
I tried to time it so that if you blaze through, you'll learn them either barely in time or just a little too late and go "oh man that would have been useful to have 2 battles ago" but if you wait around and grind you'll have an awesome spell for the dungeon and the boss. So that way it's up to you, you can challenge yourself and live on the edge, or take it slow and conservative and enjoy blowing away everything in your path ^_^
And I must mention how you made Edge the star of the show from Eblan through the Tower of Babil with his ability to deal Massive amounts of damage he carries the team unlike the original game where he feels like a hanger-on for a rather long time, from Tornado in dealing with the Bats and Flans to a Fire2 here and there to deal with some of the more vulnerable enemies he was ever useful.
As I think I mentioned before there are a lot of "reversals" of sorts in this game.
Rydia did leave with a lot of good stuff though, oh well. I'll make do.
I sure wish I kept a bow now...
I guess that's just part of not knowing when someone will leave or join... you don't know ahead of time to de-equip them. Same as when you first played the original. You didn't know your ship was going to be attacked so why would you think to de-equip everyone?
And this seems like an ideal place to call it! All of these twists and turns continue to astound me, but I do have a few suggestions...
Glad to hear a positive reception to them! Sometimes when I write drastic changes like that I get worried that I'll do the fans wrong. And suggestions are always appreciated!
Since the Tower of Zot is presumably not appearing you may want to change the layout in the map editor of what is now essentially the first six floors of the Tower of Babil (you can leave the sixth floor and Central Command alone though). I somewhat imagine you planned to do that since this is just an Alpha after all.
I'm not sure what you mean by this... you mean make entirely new maps instead of reusing the Zot maps and calling it Babil?
On that note, I never liked the whole idea of the Tower of Zot in the original. It was never really explained nor visible on the overworld; I always felt it would have been better to just have the Tower of Babil be the enemy headquarters.
Alright. Got it. Out of curiosity would you have an option to re-implement Evasion into the game? Since it Is referenced in the Enemy Data after all, it would seem a rather strange thing to leave as is. (I wouldn't suggest to automatically fix it because they didn't bother balancing Evasion at all, but to have it as an option in "Features" could be desirable) It's literally a two byte change.
Would love to ^_^
Alright!
ROM - 0190D7 9D 2A 20 - Change that to 9D 29 20 to have Evasion Actually put in Evasion and for Magical Evasion... ROM - 0190EF 9D 24 20 - Change that to 9D 23 20 to have Magical Evasion put into its designated spot.
Yes, I couldn't quite tell but was the place less beat up than it normally is?
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I guess my logic is more like, the shurikens are for throwing. The other weapons can be thrown, but really you wouldn't want to buy a ton of them specifically for that. And don't worry, the regular shuriken will get pretty useless pretty soon.
Ah? Currently where I'm at they're dealing 1000 damage easily. I guess the next rank of Shurikens will be available soon?
That is Very useful to know! I would not have guessed that since the Katanas sometimes double as Dark Swords in some games. (Even in FFIV the Murasame is referred to as "The Blade of Black".
Depends on the particular katana in this one. Ashura is holy, Kotetsu is dark, Murakumo is Air, and I think the rest are neutral.
First point of business is to sell those Daggers back and buy 100 Shurikens...
Wow you really like Throw ^_^
At a base 800 damage, how can I go wrong? Haha!
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"Dies"... I wouldn't have even minded if they actually died, but it gets old when everyone who seemed dead just... wasn't... and for like no real reason other than "yay so and so is back"
I somewhat imagine it was done in response to the Literal "everyone dies" in the original FFII.
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He should be dealing more than that with the Ashura, at least to the skeletons, assuming you put him up front?
He was a bit of a risk to have in the front, so he stayed in the back, chucking Shurikens most of the time.
Yes! Rydia Finally learned Sylph! Another means of mass healing! (If it hasn't been nerfed)
Sylph Costs 00, seems to have a longer charge time, but deals decent enough damage and recovers a good amount. Still a solid choice.
I wish I could make it cost a positive amount. Then I could reduce the casting time to something more reasonable... but I did my best to work with what I was given.
Sylph's routine is a mess to deal with... I'm sure we'll get to it eventually though.
Oh, Secret Agent Kain! This plot just gets better and better!
Thanks! I wasn't sure how you'd react to that particular change. I never liked the whole "hypnosis" theme in the original. Kinda cheapened the baddies a little IMO.
It does hurt Kain's character development just slightly since there's no hint that he did what he did out of the desire for Rosa, but it's a minor plot point in the grand scheme of things. And who knows? It may resurface later in some fashion.
Whew, much better this time around. I did have to use my 1 Hi-Potion because of the Weak she got off near the start, but after that I managed to time everything correctly and I'm seeing in this mod that Timing against bosses is Paramount to success. And it provides a fully unique feel to this mod.
Kain's set up is interesting, protection from Flame, and a Thunder spear to deal with those weak to Thunder since the Coral Sword is a bit weak at this point. Well thought out.
Thanks! Incidentally, Kain also can't use swords in this one, not sure if you noticed. His choices are Spear or Axe.
Interestingly enough Final Fantasy Record Keeper also did the same thing, it took away Kain's ability to use Swords. But he could use Axes.
Wha? We're trying to one-up Golbez to get to the moon before him? This is very unexpected!
Oh, placing the crystals into their altars like this, is cool!
Thanks! I really wanted the player to have a sense of excitement and satisfaction of having collected "all" four crystals and putting them into their chambers and stuff... It seems to have done it's job I take it?
I thought it was a great moment. Though I always wondered... are we stuck to having the Crystals being Blue? If not, perhaps it may be best to change them to their corresponding colors if possible?
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I tried to time it so that if you blaze through, you'll learn them either barely in time or just a little too late and go "oh man that would have been useful to have 2 battles ago" but if you wait around and grind you'll have an awesome spell for the dungeon and the boss. So that way it's up to you, you can challenge yourself and live on the edge, or take it slow and conservative and enjoy blowing away everything in your path ^_^
You did a great job with that! I know I felt that way after getting Ifrit After Scarmiglione, hehe.
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I guess that's just part of not knowing when someone will leave or join... you don't know ahead of time to de-equip them. Same as when you first played the original. You didn't know your ship was going to be attacked so why would you think to de-equip everyone?
Precisely, and it's no complaint. All versions of FFIV have had this since the party is changing in a fairly rapid fashion as events proceed. To choreograph it is to ruin the surprise.
Since the Tower of Zot is presumably not appearing you may want to change the layout in the map editor of what is now essentially the first six floors of the Tower of Babil (you can leave the sixth floor and Central Command alone though). I somewhat imagine you planned to do that since this is just an Alpha after all.
I'm not sure what you mean by this... you mean make entirely new maps instead of reusing the Zot maps and calling it Babil?
On that note, I never liked the whole idea of the Tower of Zot in the original. It was never really explained nor visible on the overworld; I always felt it would have been better to just have the Tower of Babil be the enemy headquarters.
You make a good point. Some concept art shows the Tower of Zot being similar to the Flying Fortress from FFI I always assumed it was Barbariccia's domain and because of its relative inaccessibility Golbez holed up there (in which he could have also stayed in the Tower of Babil)
I merely meant changing the layout of those maps so that they aren't so blatantly the Tower of Zot. But if you wanted to keep that connection to the original game, then you may as well keep them looking the same.
And we proceed... making our way to the Dwarven Castle I imagine.
The enemies on the way back aren't too bad, and you can steal Hi-Potions from the Tortoises which is Very welcome!
Edge learned Ice-2! That should be great for any other fights in the Underworld map.
Made it to the backdoor of the Dwarven Castle.
Human children? So this is where Palom and Porom ended up warping to, eh?
(3 Cabins from chests..) Yeah, that seems the appropriate time for that.
Red Flying Ship crashed nearby? That could be interesting.
Looks like the Dwarven Castle has a lot of variety in Weapons, but I've learned my lesson! Don't buy unless I've looted the place already!
There we are, a Throwing Axe! I can put Cid safely in the back row now. Also good on you calling it the "Throwing Axe" because the original game calls it the "Dwarven Axe" without any hint that it can attack from the backrow...
But speaking of the Backrow, did you patch in the Long Range Bit fix, that fixes the bug so you don't always have Long Range advantage?
Hmm... why does King Giott let some travelers who he never met take his treasures? (Mention by the Dwarf in the 2nd floor of the West Tower)
Power Glove is pretty nice! Good defense and a nice boost to attack.
Another Judo Uniform, will probably give that to Rosa when I get a good bow.
Now back to the Equipment Shops!
Hmm, while Wooden Arrows are sold, a bow is not... I sure hope I remembered to put her original one away...
Nuts... didn't store one away. I guess a melee Rosa will have to wait.
62 more Shurikens...
Ah well, I picked up an Aura staff for now. I wonder what that will do?
Also picked up the Sleep Blade because in FFIV this things was downright abusable, let's see if it is still here... ( I do have to say I always preferred the name Slumber Blade, personally. It felt more unique)
10 more power than the Flame Blade, always nice.
40,000 GP... I think I can afford 97 Hi-Potions.
And I'll pick up another Rune Ring and Angel Robe for good measure.
Slight misspelling here...
"Giott: a sovreign nation..." that should be "a sovereign nation..."
King Santos, eh? Interesting name, any reason? It doesn't sound particularly Dwarven to me.
I do like this "next set of missions" blurb we're getting here. Bolt is with the Dwarves, Ice is in Tomra, Shadow is in the Feymarch and the Holy Crystal is... in a new dungeon? Or is the Shrine to Bahamut a renamed Sylph's Cave? Since Sylphs are just normal summons in this game.
Ah, so that's their proper introduction to the party. It works well, interesting to see how wrong a Warp can go though, hehe. I do like how Cecil just resigns himself "Come along, kids."
That Airship fixing scene was worthy of the classic similar scenes from FFIV from Cid jumping over the Twins to enlisting them to help in fixing the airship all in wordless comedy that is understood by the limited range of animations you had to play with, again, amazing work!
Haha! The Red Dwarf it is. Good reference to the actual star-type.
And we've lost Cid for now... and I gave him the Throwing Axe and Power Glove, haha.
Yikes, the Twins are outfitted terribly, back to the shop ASAP!
Palom can equip Knives... I'm glad to see that was kept as it seems that could be much more useful in this version.
Poison Rod raises Wisdom by 10! Very impressive.
Oh, anyone can equip Hairpins now, not sure how I missed that.
That's right! Porom can equip hammers! I should've outfitted her for that...
3 attack multipliers x 90 damage should give her a decent attack rate.
So I'm given free reign to acquire any of these three crystals as I like, eh? How refreshing!
Stopped by Kokkol's ransacked the place. Didn't see too much changed there.
Oh... King Santos is Santa Claus, haha! Was not expecting that!
The Farmer in Tomra became a Miner... which makes a lot more sense, also the store room had a lot of nice goodies this time around!
At the Equipment Shops... Wow. Expensive items, and there's that bow... but I have no money, haha.
I like this! High grade equipment which is probably outside the player's price range at the moment gives them incentive to return to buy this gear. Good work!
The Sealed Cave is not even recognizable! It was a full on transformation and it looks great!
I didn't find King Santos though... is he at the bottom of the dungeon perhaps?
Well, the Ice Dungeon seems a good first stop with the Flame Sword in hand.
Oh Aura Staff casts Protect, not bad!
I am clearly playing a dangerous game leaving Porom in the front row like that.
Can't Multi-target the Sleep Blade, heh. That's... reasonable.
Monsters in a chest, hmm? The Dark Elf?! Hmm, named Wizard... well I'll see what I can do.
Death, yikes! I guess also a reference to Astos from FFI.
Whew, that was a close one. Porom and Cecil were both killed by Death and trying to revive them only got them killed by the other spells. Thankfully the Shurikens came through.
Chaos Blade? I'm sure I said this before but it is always nice to see an FFT reference!
I think... I should retreat after that, there's no guarantee I'll be able to win if I fall elsewhere.
It seems as if Cecil is wearing something that resists Spirits. I'm pretty sure it's not Mythril though, since the Screamers deal single-digits to him.
Alright Saved and used a Cabin, once more into the brink!
Ah, the Chaos Blade can Charm! That is very useful! Especially since the means of Charm have been lost since Edward.
VampLady's Red Feast though deals Significant damage! 200-250 easily. This may be the first mod where Resistance to Absorb would actually mean something.
Ice Armor, hmm... if I give that to Cecil he'll lose an Attack Multiplier... I'll hold off on that.
Warp in front of the Crystal House, hmm? What a neat idea!
No Float...! Here comes the pain!
Frost Dragon, another new foe... let's check him out!
Flame Sword does a number on him, but Blizzard hurts us a lot as well!
He hit hard! But we got him, and he yielded the Icebrand, very nice!
I think for now I should turn Porom back into a healer, this place is just a bit much for physical attacks.
Ah, another pair of Power Gloves... it's as if you knew the first pair may walk away with Cid, this will give Cecil 32 Strength when equipped with the Power Glove and the Ice Armor allowing him to replace the Judo gear. It seems the GaiaGear isn't very useful here so the Judo gear will go to Edge.
Thank goodness I bought 99 Hi-Potions!
Whoa, found a lot of GP.
Oh, the right side just a trap.
...Wha? I was transported out? That's... hmm... well I'll pick up the Killer Bow for Rosa at least and head back in.
There we go! Now Rosa has more Strength than Cecil or Edge with some decent attacking capability!
Haha! Wow you did! You made a true puzzle in FFIV that requires the use of a Spell! I don't want to spoil this one, that one was Too good!
I enjoyed how Cecil is just basically rolling his eyes at Ciriatto pretending to be Santos.
Reflect, hmm? (At this point I've tried to block out what I saw in the videos)
Gaahh! That Blizzard nearly wiped out my party!
I see, Fire Magic does not break the Ice Wall... and I lost.
Whew! An intense fight! Down to the wire really. I defeated him before he started cycling back through. I Berserked Cecil with the Flame Blade, kept him healed up with continually dying Porom and Palom, threw Shurikens, and then was met with Blizzard which wiped out everyone but Cecil and Rosa once more, but I revived Porom, had her heal Cecil and Rosa, Rosa revived Palom and Edge in turn, Edge threw more Shurikens, Palom healed Rosa and Porom healed Rosa and finally Rosa used Haste on the re-Berserked Cecil (since Blk. Hole got rid of it.) The Chakra that he uses almost lends an air of inevitability that you Cannot win. It's rather powerful psychologically. Cecil eventually overpowered Ciriatto and that was that.
All in all a very tense battle all throughout. Another instance of needing to come back from the brink against the odds to obtain victory. A great new boss, well done!
Well, at least Santa Claus wasn't killed by Golbez's fiend unlike King Baron!
Shuriken from the Screamers, heh... alright.
Keeping Edge's Wisdom high is worth it just to deal with the Bats before they RedFeast you down. But... I learned that only a little too late.
That's one Crystal down! Next time I will chase after the Shadow Crystal in the Feymarch!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 12, 2015, 07:36:44 PM
ROM - 0190D7 9D 2A 20 - Change that to 9D 29 20 to have Evasion Actually put in Evasion and for Magical Evasion... ROM - 0190EF 9D 24 20 - Change that to 9D 23 20 to have Magical Evasion put into its designated spot.
I thought it was a great moment. Though I always wondered... are we stuck to having the Crystals being Blue? If not, perhaps it may be best to change them to their corresponding colors if possible?
We're not stuck... I thought all the overworld crystals were blue while the underworld ones were gold... was I mistaken? They're just NPCs so they can use any of the NPC palettes. The thing is, if I get too diverse with it, it might be annoying when they're all in a room together.
You make a good point. Some concept art shows the Tower of Zot being similar to the Flying Fortress from FFI I always assumed it was Barbariccia's domain and because of its relative inaccessibility Golbez holed up there (in which he could have also stayed in the Tower of Babil)
I agree that's what they were going for, but, it just was poorly executed. There's no indication of a flying fortress anywhere. Kain just says after you get the crystal "come to the Tower of Zot" and you're like "The wha... ?" and your airships just float up into oblivion and you're like "Oh so... I could have flown higher all this time, or... not?" Then suddenly you're in this mystery tower. I dunno, I guess having some kind of representation of it on the overworld would have mitigated a lot of the problems. Even if it was just a little cloud with a tower floating above that lake with the waterfall next to Troia or whatever.
I merely meant changing the layout of those maps so that they aren't so blatantly the Tower of Zot. But if you wanted to keep that connection to the original game, then you may as well keep them looking the same.
It's more out of laziness. I might change it in a future version or something but I think for this release I'll leave it as is unless there's a more pressing reason to change it.
Also picked up the Sleep Blade because in FFIV this things was downright abusable, let's see if it is still here... ( I do have to say I always preferred the name Slumber Blade, personally. It felt more unique)
10 more power than the Flame Blade, always nice.
It doesn't cast Sleep if that's what you're wondering. It's Cecil's last neutral-element sword for a while.
I do like this "next set of missions" blurb we're getting here. Bolt is with the Dwarves, Ice is in Tomra, Shadow is in the Feymarch and the Holy Crystal is... in a new dungeon? Or is the Shrine to Bahamut a renamed Sylph's Cave? Since Sylphs are just normal summons in this game.
Ah, so that's their proper introduction to the party. It works well, interesting to see how wrong a Warp can go though, hehe. I do like how Cecil just resigns himself "Come along, kids."
I was going to give the twins a line mentioning how the warp caused them to end up getting shunted to all these strange places (a-la the warp stack overflow glitch) but I decided against it. I may or may not put something like that back in if I can find a way to word it sensibly but still get the idea across...
And yeah Cecil's not too happy about Giott handing him responsibility for these kids at first but they grow on him. How can they not? Everyone loves those two.
That Airship fixing scene was worthy of the classic similar scenes from FFIV from Cid jumping over the Twins to enlisting them to help in fixing the airship all in wordless comedy that is understood by the limited range of animations you had to play with, again, amazing work!
Thanks! Not sure if you picked up on it, but you can see him counting off "one, two, three" before they all "fix" together.
Haha! The Red Dwarf it is. Good reference to the actual star-type.
Actually it's more than that. The original game named its airships after famous sci-fi spaceships. "Enterprise" is the ship in Star Trek, "Falcon" is the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars. So I did the same in the hack, just, with different spaceships. "Red Dwarf" is the ship from, well, Red Dwarf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf) and the other one I'll explain if needed once you get it.
Gives him a boost to get up to speed with the rest of the party. Even though they start at a higher level than the original it's still a low level compared to where they should be for where you are. Gives the player a good excuse to go grinding and treasure hunting among the various dungeons before delving into the bosses.
That's right! Porom can equip hammers! I should've outfitted her for that...
3 attack multipliers x 90 damage should give her a decent attack rate.
POW! :relom:
You'll probably miss the Will boost from the staff, but it enables "Bonk!" (not to mention "Fight"), and if you kept your Gaia hammer, she can Quake things...
Oh... King Santos is Santa Claus, haha! Was not expecting that!
Not too meta or cheezy I hope... the idea was less that he is Santa and more like, maybe throughout the ages afterwards, stories were told and details got more distorted and fantastical.
The Farmer in Tomra became a Miner... which makes a lot more sense, also the store room had a lot of nice goodies this time around!
At the Equipment Shops... Wow. Expensive items, and there's that bow... but I have no money, haha.
I like this! High grade equipment which is probably outside the player's price range at the moment gives them incentive to return to buy this gear. Good work!
Thanks! Players who didn't buy 100 shurikens can probably afford a bow ^_^
Monsters in a chest, hmm? The Dark Elf?! Hmm, named Wizard... well I'll see what I can do.
Death, yikes! I guess also a reference to Astos from FFI.
That was done before I knew how to properly palette swap boss sprites. In future that will be a palette swapped Dark Elf. It's supposed to actually be referencing the Dark Wizards in FF1, the guys who look like Astos but are much scarier.
VampLady's Red Feast though deals Significant damage! 200-250 easily. This may be the first mod where Resistance to Absorb would actually mean something.
Ice Armor, hmm... if I give that to Cecil he'll lose an Attack Multiplier... I'll hold off on that.
Warp in front of the Crystal House, hmm? What a neat idea!
No Float...! Here comes the pain!
If you want to grind for float you'll be there for quite some time.
Haha! Wow you did! You made a true puzzle in FFIV that requires the use of a Spell! I don't want to spoil this one, that one was Too good!
Once again I can't take too much credit for that one. Also there is a way to get there "manually" without casting Warp if for some reason you can't or don't want to or didn't think of it.
Whew! An intense fight! Down to the wire really. I defeated him before he started cycling back through. I Berserked Cecil with the Flame Blade, kept him healed up with continually dying Porom and Palom, threw Shurikens, and then was met with Blizzard which wiped out everyone but Cecil and Rosa once more, but I revived Porom, had her heal Cecil and Rosa, Rosa revived Palom and Edge in turn, Edge threw more Shurikens, Palom healed Rosa and Porom healed Rosa and finally Rosa used Haste on the re-Berserked Cecil (since Blk. Hole got rid of it.) The Chakra that he uses almost lends an air of inevitability that you Cannot win. It's rather powerful psychologically. Cecil eventually overpowered Ciriatto and that was that.
All in all a very tense battle all throughout. Another instance of needing to come back from the brink against the odds to obtain victory. A great new boss, well done!
Challenging but achievable. That's what I like to hear ^_^
That's one Crystal down! Next time I will chase after the Shadow Crystal in the Feymarch!
Good luck! Just a heads up though, the Feymarch is one place where people definitely say messed up things (i.e. unchanged from the original) when they really should be saying new things, I just haven't written the dialogue yet. So don't be too alarmed if you talk to someone and they're like "Hi, Rydia!". The "main plot" scenes that take place there have the correct dialogue, but the rest is just leftover garbage.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 13, 2015, 07:15:59 PM
We're not stuck... I thought all the overworld crystals were blue while the underworld ones were gold... was I mistaken? They're just NPCs so they can use any of the NPC palettes. The thing is, if I get too diverse with it, it might be annoying when they're all in a room together.
In the original release, this is true. The PSP and DS Versions seem to say that they were their respective colors (Blue, Red, Green, Brown, etc. The Dark Crystals have always been that weird Gold/Black though)
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I agree that's what they were going for, but, it just was poorly executed. There's no indication of a flying fortress anywhere. Kain just says after you get the crystal "come to the Tower of Zot" and you're like "The wha... ?" and your airships just float up into oblivion and you're like "Oh so... I could have flown higher all this time, or... not?" Then suddenly you're in this mystery tower. I dunno, I guess having some kind of representation of it on the overworld would have mitigated a lot of the problems. Even if it was just a little cloud with a tower floating above that lake with the waterfall next to Troia or whatever.
I do agree, Something on the overworld would have been preferable to what they did. It's not like they didn't have the technology the Tornado in FFII was a prime example of a floating object. Your expression is pretty exact I'd imagine for a first time player.
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It's more out of laziness. I might change it in a future version or something but I think for this release I'll leave it as is unless there's a more pressing reason to change it.
For now, it's not pressing. But it does seem like something you might want to look at down the line. .
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Ah yes, due to lack of bow your Rosa is on mage build currently isn't she... how is that by the way? I haven't done much testing of her in that mode.
It didn't seem to be all that useful. Very little damage capability outside of Demi and Slow/Haste are 100% thus the Spirit boost from it was not very pronounced. Maybe that will change though.
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I was going to give the twins a line mentioning how the warp caused them to end up getting shunted to all these strange places (a-la the warp stack overflow glitch) but I decided against it. I may or may not put something like that back in if I can find a way to word it sensibly but still get the idea across...
And yeah Cecil's not too happy about Giott handing him responsibility for these kids at first but they grow on him. How can they not? Everyone loves those two.
Yes, both from a gameplay standpoint (A devoted healer! Finally!) and personality standpoint the Twins really stand out in this mod. I like the idea of Porom somehow trying to explain where they were warped all over the place. You could even include a flashback scene of it Literally happening before ending up in the Dwarf Castle.
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Actually it's more than that. The original game named its airships after famous sci-fi spaceships. "Enterprise" is the ship in Star Trek, "Falcon" is the Millenium Falcon from Star Wars. So I did the same in the hack, just, with different spaceships. "Red Dwarf" is the ship from, well, Red Dwarf (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dwarf) and the other one I'll explain if needed once you get it.
Oh, I had never heard of this show before. It does seem to be pretty popular in Britain though.
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Gives him a boost to get up to speed with the rest of the party. Even though they start at a higher level than the original it's still a low level compared to where they should be for where you are. Gives the player a good excuse to go grinding and treasure hunting among the various dungeons before delving into the bosses.
I didn't even think about that... grabbing the various treasures before fighting the bosses may be the smarter thing to do, but... I do also like to challenge myself.
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POW! :relom:
You'll probably miss the Will boost from the staff, but it enables "Bonk!" (not to mention "Fight"), and if you kept your Gaia hammer, she can Quake things...
What does Bonk! do? It seems like it would cure a couple of status ailments? Possibly Sleep, Confuse, or Berserk? ^
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Not too meta or cheezy I hope... the idea was less that he is Santa and more like, maybe throughout the ages afterwards, stories were told and details got more distorted and fantastical.
I threw Russian Santa Claus (Ded Moroz) into Combat Boost as the boss of Everwhite Woods with no explanation so I think it works just fine, hehe.
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I can't take too much credit for that one. It should be recognizable, just not as the sealed cave... I'll leave it up to you to figure it out.
Ah, then the Sylph Cave then? Regardless there's hardly any points of similarity as far as I can tell!
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Wait... multi-target? It shouldn't be casting anything at all, let alone something multitargetable...
The battle ended before the Sleep Blade was used, I was under the impression that the Sleep Blade was still casting Sleep, just Single Target, my mistake.
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Once again I can't take too much credit for that one. Also there is a way to get there "manually" without casting Warp if for some reason you can't or don't want to or didn't think of it.
Can't take too much credit for it? Did you draw the idea from somewhere else then? To my knowledge no version of FFIV or FFIV hack ever tried something like that.
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Good luck! Just a heads up though, the Feymarch is one place where people definitely say messed up things (i.e. unchanged from the original) when they really should be saying new things, I just haven't written the dialogue yet. So don't be too alarmed if you talk to someone and they're like "Hi, Rydia!". The "main plot" scenes that take place there have the correct dialogue, but the rest is just leftover garbage.
I will keep that fully in mind.
And we proceed...
Well before I leave Tomra, I may want to pick up a Diamond Ring for Porom so she can possibly have a little better defense.
They give her Pretty good defense, surprisingly and 5 Vitality.
Despite having less Magic Defense than the Rune Ring it does have greater Magical Evasion which may make it better overall.
There are Red Eyes which are legitimately Feymarch foes.
They hit rather hard! Definitely good to use status effects on them. Glance did not seem to do anything though.
Rosa learned Stop! That should be very useful!
And after not healing after grabbing a couple of damage-required chests the moment I get off the damage panel I get backattacked from an Arachne and am immediately killed by Quake. Bad luck.
Arachnes, even with a First Strike for us, proceeded to use Quake, then attacked, then Quake again, they are seemingly quite fast! Only Cecil survived with 100-some HP.
Warriors and Fiends are quite a tricky batch to deal with. Fiends can be silenced, it doesn't mean anything since their Charm is the Enemy Spell so they can use it through Charm and they counter with Charm whenever they take damage.
Is that a new Shuriken? Shuriken/Fuma/Yagyu then?
(Goes up to chest on the bottom floor through roughly 10 damage tiles, doesn't heal.)
Monsters, great...
Hmm, the Diamond Ring might protect against whatever the Warriors are... probably Undead?
I should just consider myself lucky that Edge got a turn first and was able to heal Cecil who in turn revived Porom, since I noticed that Porom, equipped with the Diamond Ring was taking very little damage from the Warriors (it may be the Angel Robe as well)
Alright, the 5 Warriors have been Blinded, Cecil has been Berserked and the party has been revived!
Wow, the Blood Sword! I did not expect that to be here! It makes it all worth while then!
A Fantastic upgrade in attack and his stats become decreased by 5. That seems a fair tradeoff.
And that's everything from the Feymarch! Geez, I had to run from most encounters, disgracefully enough. There is no way to deal with the Fiends and the Arachne's can't really be fought unless a lot of healing is planned beforehand.
Dark Arrows and Yoichi Arrows from the chests at the bottom of the Feymarch, I'll have to use them carefully.
Well, that took about 70 Hi Potions, so I should probably replenish those.
Gah, everything here is so expensive! As it technically was in the original game, the Diamond Armor here would help against the Fiend of Lightning eventually and the Zeus Gauntlet is ordinarily a rare drop from Giant-types...
I'll assume that the best offense is a good defense and go with the Aegis Shield. 30% Magical Evasion seems like the best bet to me.
A Fairy Rod? I wonder if it will let me cast Charm like it does in the original...
Oh hey! It's Rydia!
That... makes a lot of sense that the Sylphs would come to her aid. Is the scene supposed to switch to Cecil though, it is a very short scene though, so possibly not? Also, another good use of themes, here using Rydia's own.
So I need to remember that Rydia is recovering in the Feymarch... that will likely be important later.
Hmm, the Chocobo's here have odd palettes.
In the Feymarch Library "Test a Caller before you answer the summon." But I don't think any of that text has been touched, alongside the Feymarch denizen's text. (Though I noticed you did put a couple of Sylphs here and there, which were not present in the original.)
Oh, you did not show this part in the video! I did not expect a 1st Ciriatto!
Wow, RedFeast just basically Annihilated me! Dealing nearly 800 damage to Cecil and 500-600 to the Twins!
And that's the game... hmm, I'll need to think best how to approach this one...
Thankfully there's a savepoint right there, my second attempt didn't fare much better...
Wow, these Reapers that use RedFeast for 500-700 damage each have 6000 HP... but if I'm smart and lucky I can use Demi to deal with them...
After a round of RedFeast I managed to take out One... they appear to be weak to Holy, but the only Holy weapon I have is the Ashura. Porom, Rosa, and Edge can deal about 1500 damage each to one, while Cecil and Palom should be able to finish one off, but there's very little recovery time allowed. The two people who can use Slow are tied down to Demi.
Alright! I managed to take one down before RedFeast occurred! RedFeast did take out Rosa though and severely weakened others.
Took out two, but then were killed by the two remaining RedFeasts....
Oh wait... I just now realized how useless Magic Evasion is for the Dark Knight, he Can never gain one because his Will can never rise above 1 hence he never gains Magic Defense Multipliers. So... I wasted 20000 Gil, whoops.
Of course! They aren't bosses, otherwise Demi couldn't hit them! That means they would have to be vulnerable to Stop!
I can use X-Potions against them as well, hmm... I may yet find a way.
Yes, this will have to do it. All 7 X-Potions will have to be chucked in this fight.
This will also allow Rosa to use Stop on a separate one and thereby mitigate the damage even further.
Whew, a lot of luck, a lot of careful timing, and a lot of strategy has whittled them down to a single Reaper.
This should give me enough space to revive and work my way back from this.
Finally! Ciriatto is down! Now, just to take out that Reaper (I wasn't going to let what happened with Scarmiglione happen here...)
Now onto the fiend Ciriatto! I'm a bit frightened at this point. Thankfully I healed up before leaving...
And I lost... *sigh*...
I guess I'll have to grind, my levels seem a bit low. I guess I'll check out the Shrine to Bahamut tomorrow then.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 13, 2015, 11:30:24 PM
So I'm up to the Antlion's den at this point. The only extra thing I have to contribute to the conversation is that you might want to consider including at least a minor "reversal" earlier in the hack. I mean, I'm enjoying it so far, but so far it's really just been FFIV with some minor modifications. And I'm OK with that, but if I didn't know that I was on the precipice of some major differences, I'm not sure I would still be playing. So, seeing as how one of the gameplay goals was to have seasoned FFIV players say, "oh, wow, that's not what I was expecting," you might want to offer a taste of that up front. And I don't really want to suggest what you might do differently - obviously from what Grimoire's saying, a lot has been done beginning shortly after where I am currently in the game, and from his reactions it seems like you've done a lot of cool stuff, so I don't wanna screw with your grand scheme - just some food for thought.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do have a question: I'm curious about Edward's Sing ability... What ability is it replacing? Clearly it can't be regular Sing, or else it wouldn't be opening a submenu, but I also don't understand how the game tells me "can't use" when I try to look at his spell list from the menu screen...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 14, 2015, 05:52:16 PM
And now I understand what you mean about the Ice Mines design, they are a literal copy (in most places) of the Ice Cave of FFI, impressive!
Well, with that latest failure still stinging, I'll head over to the Shrine of Bahamut, see if I can't find anything else to help me and gain some levels along the way.
Hmm, ToadLady's Croak seems bizarrely focused on Edge alone, where he must have something equipped which prevents Frog because he is not being affected by it at all.
At Level 30 Cecil finally breaks 1000 HP!
Ouch, you gave Ghosts Bio in their AI Routine, thankfully they can be Muted.
Made it all the way down to the treasure room, another Wizard to fight, thankfully I've fought one before and know they aren't too bad to deal with.
Ah, but he did yield the Avenger Sword! Let's see how that is in this mod...
Wow! It is either unchanged or even better in this! Raising Strength, Agility, and Vitality by 10!
1500 Damage from his normal attack alone! This may be a turning point.
Oh! Porom eventually learns Stop as well? At this point then I should have all I need to turn the tables on Phase 1 Ciriatto!
Hmm? A Mystic Hammer? This sounds interesting!
Ah. I see what you mean now. Yes, the Mystic Hammer does appear to be Porom's best weapon with a 15 Boost to Wisdom and Will!
I will give the Diamond Ring to Palom for now...
And that is the first run through of Shrine to Bahamut! Next I'll restock (I only have a few Hi-Potions left...) then tackle the main path.
While I'm here I Really should purchase another Angel Robe...
Onto more self-mutilation in these caves!
Ah, hey! The Rune Bow! Thank goodness I didn't buy it from the Feymarch, I even made a note to do so.
Hmm, a little more power, but doesn't have the stat boost of the Killer Bow. I take it it still deals x4 damage to Mages though?
Rosa seems to Resist Toad as well, hmm...
Does the Mystic Hammer also deal x4 Damage to Mages? It dealt a 700 damage hit from the backrow to a DarkTree, more than respectable amount!
Alright! Porom has learned the almighty Cure 3! I can feel my chances of success rising with each level!
Another Frost Dragon, alright then...
Killed Porom, the Blizzard was mostly shrugged off. But I got the MageMasher for my trouble!
Ah? The Wisdom Bonus was taken away from the MageMasher? That seems like an odd choice.
Oh! Bonk! has random buffs! I see now.
A Save point! Thank goodness!
I've said it before, I love the idea of a False Prophet, and to tie that into the lore of Bahamut is very well conceived!
Wow. We can dish out damage, but Comet brings us low! Thankfully we now have enough levels to recover from this... I think.
Oh. Cecil with the Avenger Sword wrecked him pretty badly. I didn't even get the chance to recover from Comet!
Fantastic, the White and Black Robes!
Whew, thank goodness you kept that back exit. Otherwise it would have bee a long trek back!
Well now I have a fair amount of money, some powerful new spells, and a lot of good equipment. I think I'm ready for my rematch with Ciriatto!
What a difference a few levels make! Before I was running from Arachne and their powerful Quake, now I can outlast them without issue.
I'll try once with Avenger Cecil... but I somewhat think that may cause problems, we'll see.
Ah, first I should buy the Zeus Gauntlets for Cecil.
They... don't appear to do much of anything. Possibly resist Lightning?
I'll keep them around, but possibly another waste of 20,000 Gil for me.
First Salvo, two of the Reapers were Stopped, so Red Feast left everyone alive. One is now dead, Cecil is admittedly not being too useful here with his random attacking with a Dark Sword against Dark Creatures, heh.
Ciriatto Phase 1 has been dealt with in a timely fashion! Cure3 and 2 Stop Wielders made All the difference!
And I lost I ran out of MP for Porom and didn't realize it until it was too late... it's also what I get for going in with Cecil wielding the Avenger.
It's finally over! Porom was able to keep us mostly healed, but then Ciriatto just seemed to focus in on her at the end, but it was too late for him, a Throw already in progress and a Berserked Cecil with the Sleep Blade put him to rest! I have to say, it was the first time in an FF game where I threw all of my X-Potions at the enemy!
Let's go for a triple! I'll go and settle things at the Dwarf Castle before I call it today.
Hey! It's Cid!
That is neat! I like that you're showing Cid as just more then mechanically minded, also "using the power of the Bolt Crystal" kind of brings to mind Bravely Default, hehe.
Y'know... this scene works a lot better with Edge than it does with Yang. Yang, prior to that scene had no "intuition" or anything like that. It's not he who sees that Baigan was a monster, nor was it he who saw the King was a fake. It does come out of nowhere, but since Edge is a Ninja it is much more believable he could tell things like this.
Your Cecil is a bit more likable in terms of gender roles. Throughout FFIV he's continually like "No Rosa, no you can't go..." etc. Yours trusts Rosa enough to stand with Cid and fight, granted your Rosa is a bit more competent than the original one as well.
Golbez? He is everywhere in this mod!
I do like the idea that the Calbrena was just a decoy though.
Way to go Kain!!
That was quite awesome, sure we haven't seen him for a while, but one of his first actions back is to prevent Golbez from getting the other four crystals.
Oh wow! Malocoda was definitely made tougher since the videos. She physically attacks a lot more frequently.
Whew! By all rights I Should have lost, she killed my entire party, except for Kain, but she could only deal one damage to Kain (or 110 rarely) and the timing just Happened to be so Perfect that he was Jumping when she used Bolt 3.
I don't know whether that was a flaw in design or just dumb luck on my part.
That's right! We still have the Bolt Crystal.
Cecil's leadership abilities here are shown in full force, he lists each role that the party will play and how they will assist in the recovery operation. It really lends credence to him Being an army commander.
And that's the Eight Fiends Down! As you mentioned, I should remind you to update the patch at this point.
It's been a wild ride so far! I don't remember the last time an FFIV game Forced me to grind in order to get past a certain part. That's not a bad thing mind you. That was Incredible use of that Visual Effect! I mean, Wow!
I like that Porom knows that the Calbrena belong to Luca, establishing that the Twins became acquainted with the Dwarves while there.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: chillyfeez on May 14, 2015, 07:49:42 PM
This is a minor detail, but... I think it would look cool if, in the scene where Rydia bombs the ice, you used simultaneous NPC movements to make the ice wall scatter... Like if you made sure the ice on the left was "facing left" and the ice on the right was "facing right" then made them all "jump sideways" when the bomb explodes, then blink out... Or something like that. Like I said, it's minor, and just a suggestion.
Did you eliminate the water hag battle just to save on events, by the way,, or is there a story-driven reason?
:edit: Bug report: if you walk onto the Fabul dock before the battle of Fabul, the game softlocks.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 15, 2015, 05:55:14 PM
I re-removed the magic evasion. It was causing strange things, like jump to miss and such. Basically the hack is designed with the original game mechanics in mind and I think I'm too far along to go back over it all, even if it would be for the best.
This is a minor detail, but... I think it would look cool if, in the scene where Rydia bombs the ice, you used simultaneous NPC movements to make the ice wall scatter... Like if you made sure the ice on the left was "facing left" and the ice on the right was "facing right" then made them all "jump sideways" when the bomb explodes, then blink out... Or something like that. Like I said, it's minor, and just a suggestion.
Sounds cool, I'll give it a try and see what I can come up with ^_^
So I'm up to the Antlion's den at this point. The only extra thing I have to contribute to the conversation is that you might want to consider including at least a minor "reversal" earlier in the hack. I mean, I'm enjoying it so far, but so far it's really just been FFIV with some minor modifications. And I'm OK with that, but if I didn't know that I was on the precipice of some major differences, I'm not sure I would still be playing. So, seeing as how one of the gameplay goals was to have seasoned FFIV players say, "oh, wow, that's not what I was expecting," you might want to offer a taste of that up front. And I don't really want to suggest what you might do differently - obviously from what Grimoire's saying, a lot has been done beginning shortly after where I am currently in the game, and from his reactions it seems like you've done a lot of cool stuff, so I don't wanna screw with your grand scheme - just some food for thought.
Sorry to hear that, but I don't think that's in the cards right now. I think it's in a pretty good place, and the fewer significant changes I have before that turnabout, the more impact it will have for people not expecting it. I'm sure there will be some people disappointed no matter what I do.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do have a question: I'm curious about Edward's Sing ability... What ability is it replacing? Clearly it can't be regular Sing, or else it wouldn't be opening a submenu, but I also don't understand how the game tells me "can't use" when I try to look at his spell list from the menu screen...
Sing replaces Ninja. Edward has a spellset assigned in battle but none in the menu; that's how that effect is achieved.
It didn't seem to be all that useful. Very little damage capability outside of Demi and Slow/Haste are 100% thus the Spirit boost from it was not very pronounced. Maybe that will change though.
Maybe. I'll certainly consider giving the effect spells a lower hit rate to make Will do more.
Yes, both from a gameplay standpoint (A devoted healer! Finally!) and personality standpoint the Twins really stand out in this mod. I like the idea of Porom somehow trying to explain where they were warped all over the place. You could even include a flashback scene of it Literally happening before ending up in the Dwarf Castle.
That... makes a lot of sense that the Sylphs would come to her aid. Is the scene supposed to switch to Cecil though, it is a very short scene though, so possibly not? Also, another good use of themes, here using Rydia's own.
It's finally over! Porom was able to keep us mostly healed, but then Ciriatto just seemed to focus in on her at the end, but it was too late for him, a Throw already in progress and a Berserked Cecil with the Sleep Blade put him to rest! I have to say, it was the first time in an FF game where I threw all of my X-Potions at the enemy!
That is neat! I like that you're showing Cid as just more then mechanically minded, also "using the power of the Bolt Crystal" kind of brings to mind Bravely Default, hehe.
I was picturing him using it in conjuction with his technology. A-la FF5 Cid kinda.
Y'know... this scene works a lot better with Edge than it does with Yang. Yang, prior to that scene had no "intuition" or anything like that. It's not he who sees that Baigan was a monster, nor was it he who saw the King was a fake. It does come out of nowhere, but since Edge is a Ninja it is much more believable he could tell things like this.
Your Cecil is a bit more likable in terms of gender roles. Throughout FFIV he's continually like "No Rosa, no you can't go..." etc. Yours trusts Rosa enough to stand with Cid and fight, granted your Rosa is a bit more competent than the original one as well.
Agreed, that always kinda bugged me as well. "Stay home and make sandwiches while we men go to the moon"
That was quite awesome, sure we haven't seen him for a while, but one of his first actions back is to prevent Golbez from getting the other four crystals.
This scene is supposed to call to mind the events in the sealed cave in the original; only, reversed.
Whew! By all rights I Should have lost, she killed my entire party, except for Kain, but she could only deal one damage to Kain (or 110 rarely) and the timing just Happened to be so Perfect that he was Jumping when she used Bolt 3.
I don't know whether that was a flaw in design or just dumb luck on my part.
Either way, as I said before, I'm not too concerned if Malacoda isn't the most difficult battle as it's in the middle of such a long plot scene.
Cecil's leadership abilities here are shown in full force, he lists each role that the party will play and how they will assist in the recovery operation. It really lends credence to him Being an army commander.
It's been a wild ride so far! I don't remember the last time an FFIV game Forced me to grind in order to get past a certain part. That's not a bad thing mind you. That was Incredible use of that Visual Effect! I mean, Wow!
The "intended" order is Alichino, Draghinazzo, Ciriatto. You can do them out of order, but probably only if you treasure raid everywhere first. Either way, the freedom to just go anywhere is fun.
I like that Porom knows that the Calbrena belong to Luca, establishing that the Twins became acquainted with the Dwarves while there.
Thanks ^_^
I figure the twins would have hung out with and played with Luca.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 17, 2015, 06:43:12 PM
My internet has been Awful the last couple of days so I meant to have some progress reports before now, but ah well. I have the rest of today and tomorrow off so I won't to proceed with this.
I re-removed the magic evasion. It was causing strange things, like jump to miss and such. Basically the hack is designed with the original game mechanics in mind and I think I'm too far along to go back over it all, even if it would be for the best.
Magic Evasion was never fully tested by Square I feel. I'm pretty sure on that because the default numbers they assign are Insane and makes Magic nearly useless in many respects. However Jump missing is due to ordinary evasion, after all Jump does only increase Accuracy x2. Which is why the abysmal Blood Spear doesn't get much better even with Jump.
So I'm up to the Antlion's den at this point. The only extra thing I have to contribute to the conversation is that you might want to consider including at least a minor "reversal" earlier in the hack. I mean, I'm enjoying it so far, but so far it's really just been FFIV with some minor modifications. And I'm OK with that, but if I didn't know that I was on the precipice of some major differences, I'm not sure I would still be playing. So, seeing as how one of the gameplay goals was to have seasoned FFIV players say, "oh, wow, that's not what I was expecting," you might want to offer a taste of that up front. And I don't really want to suggest what you might do differently - obviously from what Grimoire's saying, a lot has been done beginning shortly after where I am currently in the game, and from his reactions it seems like you've done a lot of cool stuff, so I don't wanna screw with your grand scheme - just some food for thought.
Sorry to hear that, but I don't think that's in the cards right now. I think it's in a pretty good place, and the fewer significant changes I have before that turnabout, the more impact it will have for people not expecting it. I'm sure there will be some people disappointed no matter what I do.
I have one suggestion to make on this, I wonder if you might want to have Cecil be the one who falls under Desert Fever? He ostensibly carried a young girl through what was no doubt a stupor since he had just been blasted by Quake and afterwards fought an intense battle to keep her safe and as such have Rosa as the temporary main character who goes to the Antlion's Den to receive the SandRuby for Cecil? This is actually a rather small change as far as the gameplay is concerned where as your Fabul and beyond is a nearly completely different set of events, but it could be neat and would keep the veterans on their toes (it would also supply Some use for the Shortbow you can buy in Kaipo)
You were tackling Ciriatto before Level 30? Wow, I'm impressed you lasted as long as you did!
As am I really. Yes there seems to be some crucial spells you need before fighting Ciriatto Stop for both Porom and Rosa and Porom must know Cure3 to keep the party up.
It randomizes between Esuna "come to your senses", Blink "became blurry", Haste "go faster", and Arise "wake up".
If I may make a suggestion... I believe Porom starts with Haste, if not, she gains it very shortly thereafter. Perhaps you may want to make Haste a later learned ability like Blink is making a casting of Haste through this still a welcome boon.
And that's the Eight Fiends Down! As you mentioned, I should remind you to update the patch at this point.
Link at the top. Remind me again when you're about to tackle the Lunar Subterranne.
Alright! I will do.
And now back to the game...
First, let's see if the Flame Spear is worth picking up... yep! Looks like it, a nice attack upgrade for a relatively low price at this point in the game. Kain is also equipped quite well with an Aegis Shield, Diamond Armor, and Zeus Gauntlets.
He also has nearly double the HP of anyone else in the party.
Giott still mentions the other Crystals. Should there be new lines for him at this point for this mod?
Heh, an odd effect of still having access to the Airship when the Tanks are on the ground, they appear to grow in size with the Airship.
And back to the Tower of Babil!
Ninja Gear in the very first chest, quite nice!
Oh! I almost forgot to pick up more Shurikens, 67 more to be exact.
3 Eggs and a Queen Lamia? I don't recall any encounter in FFIV having ever more than one egg.
Oh. Do the Lamia no longer count as Undead? A Cure3 from Porom cured them.
Hmm, a Rune Ring from that, that's some decent selling fodder.
Whoa, the Armlet increases Vitality by 10 and provides a great boost to Defense all around! Definitely a worthy replacement to the Magic Gloves.
Hmm, maybe it's just my imagination but was the first floor of the tower's layout changed slightly?
Wow, Ice-3 is a nasty counter from the Ghost Knights, thankfully they can be silenced.
Cecil makes fools of the Alerts in the Tower of Babil making getting some ordinarily tricky chests a breeze.
Eh? Look like all of Edge's best equipment is here?
New sword for Edge, thankfully I didn't have enough to buy the one in the Feymarch!
Hey! Alright! Palom finally learned Bio!
Hmm, Porom learned Harm! I wonder how useful that would have been against Ciriatto...
The Ogre Axe is a pretty good upgrade for Kain.
Was this part of the dungeon always separated like this? Is my memory of the Tower of Babil really That bad?
Heh, the Frost Dragon's Blizzard seems to only hit Cecil now.
Ah? The way to the Center of the Tower is inaccessible, eh?
Very nice! A Diamond Ring from a normal battle with IronMan.
Going into the top floor of the Underworld Tower of Babil where Dr. Lugae was has the map name "D".
Ah? The two parts of the tower are connected in this?
What a fine choice!
And Palom learned Quake! Looks like things could be getting a bit easier from hereon out.
That was... odd... I went through the door where the Falcon would be and I was shown another map for a brief instant before I was warped to the other side of the Super Cannon bridge.
Umm... when I went into this room the scene from Zot's Crystal Room started to play... I cannot think this was intentional.
And that's as far as I can go... well so far it's been fun. The tower's been a bit easy, but I am well equipped at this point.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 17, 2015, 07:19:31 PM
I have one suggestion to make on this, I wonder if you might want to have Cecil be the one who falls under Desert Fever? He ostensibly carried a young girl through what was no doubt a stupor since he had just been blasted by Quake and afterwards fought an intense battle to keep her safe and as such have Rosa as the temporary main character who goes to the Antlion's Den to receive the SandRuby for Cecil? This is actually a rather small change as far as the gameplay is concerned where as your Fabul and beyond is a nearly completely different set of events, but it could be neat and would keep the veterans on their toes (it would also supply Some use for the Shortbow you can buy in Kaipo)
I appreciate the input but I think I'm still going to stick to the original plan of everything being the same plot-wise until the ship scene other than what absolutely needs changing due to the gameplay changes. The shortbow, much like the dreamer harp, is there just in case you accidentally sold or dropped your weapon somehow, then you're not completely screwed.
If I may make a suggestion... I believe Porom starts with Haste, if not, she gains it very shortly thereafter. Perhaps you may want to make Haste a later learned ability like Blink is making a casting of Haste through this still a welcome boon.
Maybe. I think either way, by the time the player gets the Mystic Hammer she'll probably have both Blink and Haste no matter how I do it unless I start giving them ridiculous spells early like Comet and such. Bonk is free and difficult for it to go wrong. You can even bonk a dead guy for a 25% chance of full revival.
First, let's see if the Flame Spear is worth picking up... yep! Looks like it, a nice attack upgrade for a relatively low price at this point in the game. Kain is also equipped quite well with an Aegis Shield, Diamond Armor, and Zeus Gauntlets.
He also has nearly double the HP of anyone else in the party.
Heh, an odd effect of still having access to the Airship when the Tanks are on the ground, they appear to grow in size with the Airship.
Yeah I guess they were never meant to appear when you had an airship. Not much I can do about it other than not having them appear at all, which I think would be worse.
Wow, Ice-3 is a nasty counter from the Ghost Knights, thankfully they can be silenced.
Cecil makes fools of the Alerts in the Tower of Babil making getting some ordinarily tricky chests a breeze.
I might give the regular alerts more HP. I didn't strengthen the regular monsters in the tower because it's so dang long. Each encounter is fairly easy but it's a bit of a grind getting all the way up.
That was... odd... I went through the door where the Falcon would be and I was shown another map for a brief instant before I was warped to the other side of the Super Cannon bridge.
Umm... when I went into this room the scene from Zot's Crystal Room started to play... I cannot think this was intentional.
And that's as far as I can go... well so far it's been fun. The tower's been a bit easy, but I am well equipped at this point.
Just checked the event script for the "falcon" door and it said "If Defeated Malacoda is ON, do the next 0 actions" :isuck:
Heh, an odd effect of still having access to the Airship when the Tanks are on the ground, they appear to grow in size with the Airship.
Yeah I guess they were never meant to appear when you had an airship. Not much I can do about it other than not having them appear at all, which I think would be worse.
Wow, Ice-3 is a nasty counter from the Ghost Knights, thankfully they can be silenced.
Cecil makes fools of the Alerts in the Tower of Babil making getting some ordinarily tricky chests a breeze.
I might give the regular alerts more HP. I didn't strengthen the regular monsters in the tower because it's so dang long. Each encounter is fairly easy but it's a bit of a grind getting all the way up.
Eh, just slightly. I think the Alerts need the boost though. Since any player at this point will have the Avenger, where as people back then likely didn't know about the Edge/Thunder Claw trick to take out most machines.
Quote
Just checked the event script for the "falcon" door and it said "If Defeated Malacoda is ON, do the next 0 actions" :isuck:
Oh hey! I am glad to see my custom Event code getting some use.
And now back to the game...
Hmm, on my way back through the Tower of Babil I got a Shadow Shield from an encounter with Queen Lamia, Lamia, and Black Cats, did not see that coming.
...Did I just end up in the Giant of Babil?
Judging by the foes, it would seem so.
Oh hey! Cecil learns Bio as well! Neat!
And Porom learns... Exit? I thought that spell was removed actually.
The Defender Sword here? Hmm, interesting.
...But it's not for the Dark Knight... could a class change be coming up soon?
So this is where the Yoichi Bow was hiding? Well, that works well enough.
Porom and Kain make pretty swift work of Mac Giants with their Robot/Giant smashing capabilities!
Ah, the Gungnir Lance! I rather liked that you put the Genji Armor and Gungnir in the dungeon rather than just having them be given with Kain 3. Good thinking.
Finally the Save Point... Palom's MP had been very low for a long time by this point.
Dr. Lugae! I had thought he wouldn't be in this. But being inside the Giant of Babil again makes a Lot of sense!
Edge does make a quizzical statement that he had believed that they finished off Dr. Lugae in the Tower of Babil... unless I'm forgetting a boss battle in the first ascent from the Overworld... is something like that planned?
Judging by Edge's dialogue it seemed as if Dr. Lugae was supposed to run away (considering Edge stepped right into where Dr. Lugae was standing) and Edge was chasing after him, but he didn't budge.
...What is special about the Gungnir that a Jump on the CPU would deal 9999?
Lost to the CPU because of Avenger Cecil... should have known better on that one.
And that's that. CPU down. Normal strategy basically prevailed here, except instead of Edge dealing 9999 with Thunder Claws it was Kain with the Gungnir Lance.
Well that was odd, there was second sprite of Lugae at the exit to the Giant.
So Edge leaves the party for now... that would explain why some of his best equipment was there.
Wow! I'm back on the Overworld! I didn't expect it would take That long to escape from Eblan, hehe.
Hmm, but I thought we were going to the tower to reclaim the other 7 Crystals? Or was that a trap door that waylaid us and put us in the Giant instead?
Um... there's a Sprite of Edge at Troia Castle which says "Welcome to Troia!"
So I guess I can't go back there... yet?
Well, let's check out Mythril while I have the chance!
A nice amount of GP is here, especially at that point in the game.
Oh...! So this is where Cid's second Axe was supposed to be.
Well... I've travelled everywhere except Mysidia so... to Mysidia then?
Alright, so not Mysidia... Cave Magnes?
Though it appears to have been altered pretty heavily, no. Not yet anyhow.
Mt. Ordeals...?
...Beyond the Tower of Babil Crystal Room?
Edge is appropriately in Eblan Hideout with an appropriate line, so... maybe?
...No, I get dropped into the Giant of Babil again.
And I have no idea where to go. I've been everywhere that I can reach except Mist, I went to Fabul Castle, Baron Castle, Mysidia, Mythril, Agart, there's nothing that I saw to point the way.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 18, 2015, 05:18:32 AM
You weren't supposed to end up in the Giant just then. Looks like something is still wrong with that trigger. Odd, as it was just fine on my last playthrough and I don't recall touching it since then... I'll have to load up my closest save and debug it. I'll post again when it's fixed.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 18, 2015, 07:40:03 AM
Ok that part's fixed, though it does bring up something odd that I've noticed with the conditional flag patch. Every now and then, it will cause the event to jump backwards instead of forwards, by a strange amount, sometimes going back into previous event scripts. 99% of the time it's fine, but once in a while that happens. Sometimes jimmying things around in the event fixes it but sometimes it doesn't. I wish I could be more precise.
:edit: If you downloaded before this edit, please re-download and re-patch to a clean rom. I fixed the Edge NPC bug. Also I forgot to mention, I hope you didn't save when you got to the overworld, or at least if you did that you didn't save over your regular save file... if you did, I think you're trapped.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 18, 2015, 11:57:08 AM
Ok that part's fixed, though it does bring up something odd that I've noticed with the conditional flag patch. Every now and then, it will cause the event to jump backwards instead of forwards, by a strange amount, sometimes going back into previous event scripts. 99% of the time it's fine, but once in a while that happens. Sometimes jimmying things around in the event fixes it but sometimes it doesn't. I wish I could be more precise.
:edit: If you downloaded before this edit, please re-download and re-patch to a clean rom. I fixed the Edge NPC bug. Also I forgot to mention, I hope you didn't save when you got to the overworld, or at least if you did that you didn't save over your regular save file... if you did, I think you're trapped.
Now that is troubling... yes I had no idea anything was wrong so I played and saved as normal. I guess that means I'll have to start a new game then... I'll get to that later today.
I am worried though that there is something wrong with my conditional routines then... they should not be able to go backwards, the only thing I can imagine is that the Event Progress Placement could somehow be going awry with jumping around too often? I'm rather at a loss for how such a thing could occur though.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Bahamut ZERO on May 18, 2015, 12:26:41 PM
Seeing as I have a hefty chunk of free time today and can't really mess around on my computer much today, I'll give this bad boy a go and give some feedback (as well as play through more of Chillyfeez's Threat From Within).
I'm always up for another romp through FF4's world, especially when there are new experiences to have!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 18, 2015, 06:46:25 PM
Now that is troubling... yes I had no idea anything was wrong so I played and saved as normal. I guess that means I'll have to start a new game then...
That makes me sad :( Now I'll have to wait a long time to hear your continued adventures... You should probably keep multiple saves going though just in case, as this is an alpha version after all and still under active development and has had very little in the way of debugging.
I am worried though that there is something wrong with my conditional routines then... they should not be able to go backwards, the only thing I can imagine is that the Event Progress Placement could somehow be going awry with jumping around too often? I'm rather at a loss for how such a thing could occur though.
I'll have to mess around with it a bit more to be able to give you any more detail I'm afraid. Even that might be difficult because it usually works just fine out of the gate; it's only certain specific instructions in certain specific events which trying to skip them causes it to jump backward.
Seeing as I have a hefty chunk of free time today and can't really mess around on my computer much today, I'll give this bad boy a go and give some feedback (as well as play through more of Chillyfeez's Threat From Within).
I'm always up for another romp through FF4's world, especially when there are new experiences to have!
More feedback is always appreciated!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 18, 2015, 07:00:39 PM
I'm back up to Damcyan and bizarrely all Flame sprites there appear to have turned into King Giott's sprites.
Interestingly enough I'm playing on the BSNES emulator which has an option to upscale graphics and FFIV looks Pretty good with this on!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 19, 2015, 04:50:14 AM
Haha King Giott came up from the underground to lay siege to Damcyan! This is what happens when you go replacing NPCs you thought were unused...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: chillyfeez on May 19, 2015, 07:02:05 AM
It's probably a bit late in the process as far as Crisis is concerned to go back and do this now, but I've adopted the practice of adding !!! to the end of anything I've used in the config files to avoid stuff like that happening. I don't know if I've ever expressed this before, but your idea to make the config files part of FF4kster was nothing short of genius.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 19, 2015, 04:57:31 PM
It's probably a bit late in the process as far as Crisis is concerned to go back and do this now, but I've adopted the practice of adding !!! to the end of anything I've used in the config files to avoid stuff like that happening. I don't know if I've ever expressed this before, but your idea to make the config files part of FF4kster was nothing short of genius.
It probably is; once I'm done the ending I'll probably do one more playthrough to iron out that kind of thing. And thanks :blush: It came from wishing I had such a thing in FFHackster.
So.. speaking of the ending... I want to tear my hair out and cry right now. Grimoire, your flag branching patch is the most amazing thing ever, and I've been using it all over the place, especially to make the ending something truly special. But I'm at the point where I need to figure out what's causing it to jump to strange places, and if it's not possible/practical to fix, at least figure out how to get a handle on its behaviour. Is it possible that the save file saves something related to events? So that when I change the event space somewhere nearby, it thinks the branching instruction should send it somewhere different? The reason I speculate this is because when I loaded up the ending again, having changed nothing with the ending event's code, but having changed code in other events, it suddenly started misbehaving.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 19, 2015, 11:56:15 PM
It's probably a bit late in the process as far as Crisis is concerned to go back and do this now, but I've adopted the practice of adding !!! to the end of anything I've used in the config files to avoid stuff like that happening. I don't know if I've ever expressed this before, but your idea to make the config files part of FF4kster was nothing short of genius.
It probably is; once I'm done the ending I'll probably do one more playthrough to iron out that kind of thing. And thanks :blush: It came from wishing I had such a thing in FFHackster.
So.. speaking of the ending... I want to tear my hair out and cry right now. Grimoire, your flag branching patch is the most amazing thing ever, and I've been using it all over the place, especially to make the ending something truly special. But I'm at the point where I need to figure out what's causing it to jump to strange places, and if it's not possible/practical to fix, at least figure out how to get a handle on its behaviour. Is it possible that the save file saves something related to events? So that when I change the event space somewhere nearby, it thinks the branching instruction should send it somewhere different? The reason I speculate this is because when I loaded up the ending again, having changed nothing with the ending event's code, but having changed code in other events, it suddenly started misbehaving.
This is not a good thing to hear, but if you can continue to replicate the issue, I should be able to pinpoint the point of departure. Is is possible for you to make the point in which it screws up a savestate for SNES9X Geiger's? If so I should be able to observe what is going on code wise and see particularly where my code is going awry.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 20, 2015, 04:15:55 AM
Not really, at least not any time soon. But in the zip should be a save file next to the final battle. When it activates, there's a part where it conditionally toggles visibility of an actor but instead it jumps back to the battle with Odin.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Bahamut ZERO on May 20, 2015, 12:09:11 PM
Just got Edward in the party and leveling him up some. My progress so far:
At first I was admittedly playing on auto-pilot. Didn't bother grabbing any of the chests in the castle nor did I go into town. Instead I went on a killing spree, gaining a few levels and gathering loot.
I like Cecil's Black magic setup. Status effects fit his job perfectly, and he has a nice pool of MP to use them with.
Rydia - while I somewhat miss her having black magic, I like her new setup much more. The "Help!" commands makes so much more sense on her than it would Tellah after the way she summons Titan in Mist.
Tellah - More spells at the cost of less MP is a nice tradeoff. I assume he'll gradually get some more Mp as the journey goes on.
Now it was at this point while in Watery Cave that I realize I've been playing like a robot , and that Rydia's still level 2. I throw her in the back row with Tellah, and hope for the best while fighting Octomamm.
Octomamm - I noticed it didn't change sprites during battle, making this fight feel like a real battle and not "smack the octo-squid X amount of times to win". To my relief, it seemed to do little damage to Rydia when compared to Tellah (6 to his 28) so she only died twice. Cool to see her learning summons! It makes me wonder if the Summon-learning items teach new spells in UC.
Damcyan - Oh god, Golbez's rebel land dwarves stormed the castle and turned Anna into a pin cushion! Just kidding, I'm sure that's meant to be fire. Though, it DOES give me a funny idea...
Edward - it's been so long since I've played FF4 with a normal Edward that I almost forgot how much I hate Auto-hide. But that's my feelings of the original, and nothing on your part haha.
Later tonight I'm hoping to get to at Fabul. Possibly further depending on how much I work on my projject today. I'm having fun so far!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 20, 2015, 01:47:08 PM
I found what was wrong and wow... you hit the unlucky jackpot... it was a Single exception I did not add because it never crossed my mind.
This is what is happening...
In the event progression you have one of the successful checks situated on top of an FF byte. When a successful check goes through it increments the value to continue playing the event in an ordinary fashion. What happens in this Very Specific instance is that the FF is rolled back to 00 throwing the event placement into a frenzy as it then cycles back 255 bytes because the byte next to it was never incremented.
The fix to this will take a few more bytes, but it shouldn't be too difficult. I need to add an exception if FF is the byte currently stored in the Current Event Placement.
...After dealing with this for an hour and a half I see that the crisis folder is for some reason now considered "read-only" I only noticed this after the fifth failed attempt at trying to get my code to work and why it wasn't sticking. I was nearly driven out of my mind. Windows... ugh...
It does seem to be working better now in any event. But now the event plays through, but the issue now is that the characters that are supposed to toggle visibility do not do so. However I know that my code is working because Dark Knight Cecil does change to his graphic. at least. I do know that NPC visibility and all of that is stored in the save file. If this save file wasn't made before they were implemented it could be causing the trouble...
But I don't know... I still can't get any event flag based NPC's to toggle visibility here. I imagine some of your events you used before this had done this though.
I'll PM you your newly "fixed" mod though, I can't quite figure out what's going on with the NPC's but you might have a better idea of what's going on there.
:edit: No, it's my fault. I didn't set A back to a proper 0000 before changing things back. six more bytes, I just have to be careful with the branches.
:edit: 2 And as far as I can tell it is working Exactly as intended! All of the NPC's are now appearing as per the set flags. This is wonderful, I will be sending you your mod back with the proper fixes. You should be good to go from here! To my knowledge all kinks have been worked out of the system.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 20, 2015, 03:59:04 PM
So I'm back up to Baron Castle and things are going very smoothly so far without any extra grinding. I've purchased a good amount of potions, but it turned out I didn't really need too many, I was more liberal with the use of Summons and multi-hit commands on my way to there and Cecil this time is still equipped with his Mythril Armor and until I got Cid, Edward had the Headband/Kenpo Gi.
So things are moving along well. Also did the Coral Sword have its attack adjusted? I recall it being weaker than the Ancient Sword in the previous version, now it matches it.
:edit: Made it back through the Misty Mountains, so far it's all seeming much more evenly paced. It may be because I know what's coming so I can prepare accordingly. Cagnazzo gave me little trouble and Scarmiglione's second phase was intense as always. It would seem I'm reaching Troia at Maybe a level less than I was in my first playthrough. But now I know to explore Agart and Mythril before going to Eblan.
Ah, in Troia now the boy in the Chocobo Stables has the girl's text and the girl has Dummy text.
Eh... now when Troia is attacked a text box shows "Zeromus' true form shows!"
I think "people" may be spelled wrong when the Doctor says "The crystal is safe, as is our pepole" or something like that. May have been a trick of the eyes.
I see you did change the "What's that?!" line of the Clerics into something more fitting.
This does seem like a good place to start a new entry with observing Agart and Mythril's Equipments in their proper places.
The 5000 GP from Mythril is quite nice at this point.
Battle-Axe seems like a decent weapon. It's not as powerful as the Gaia Hammer by far, but it does allow him to bear a shield. And since I didn't get lucky this time I have purchased a Viking Helm for Cecil, since I've learned in this hack that Physical Defense is Necessary. You cannot kill things quickly enough to mitigate the damage taken for a long time without a dedicated healer. All in all Mythril is a good stop to make, almost essential really if you plan to allow Cid to equip a Shield.
And onto Agart! As mentioned previously all of the text here seems relatively the same.
I forgot the Ashura blade was here... I do think my strategy of giving Edge as much Agility as possible through Knives though and tossing 800-1200 damage Shurikens is the better bet though. At least for now. So I'll be picking up a Blind Knife then.
And onto Eblan! I wonder if I can deal with the treasure seeking any better this time...
Oh interesting, you can steal Hi Potions from Stoneman, that's something to keep in mind.
Hmm, and you can steal Shurikens from Staleman having a good supply before Rubicante if you can Curse it and let it linger.
Alright, let's go get Rubicante... Edge is setup for Speed and Throwing, Cecil is set for Defense, as is Cid.
I've learned that a good defense appears to be the best offense in this mod. At least at this point since there's no reliable healing.
And Rubicante falls! He was much easier this time around, knowing how to properly time things, as mentioned, is the real key to success. I am just about in the same level range as last time, maybe a level or two less actually.
Onto the Tunnel to Babil and then Tower of Zot Babil.
That will be a little later this evening. I want to try and reclaim my lost progress by this weekend since I'll be away for a couple of days.
Barbariccia wasn't too difficult, Sylph hit when it needed to and Throw, as always, brings any enemy down quickly enough. Sandy using Comet though can actually get a bit dicey during the Magus Sisters fight, thankfully it was all but over by that point.
This time I've taken everything from Kain and Rydia before they leave as it seems when they rejoin they'll have a different set of equipment anyhow. This should also help me with any money issues.
Ah, slight typo. When Golbez says "loyal lieutenant" there's an extra "n" in the middle of lieutenant.
Oh wow! I never thought to go into the Tower of Babil from the start of the Underworld. I thought it would have been closed by Event Flags, but that's a neat little extra event you have there, it's short but it works well. It's always good to see a bit more of Kain.
This time around I kept a bow from the start so Rosa is now a full-fledged Archer.
And shopping is done at the Dwarven Castle... then I forgot about Tomra, well I have a bit of a nice lump sum of money this time around through knowing when people will leave the party.
Shopping done at Tomra and I could afford everything I wanted... but I only have less than 1000 Gil. I'll be going to the Ice Mines shortly.
The Ice Mines have been looted and I feel like an idiot for forgetting that the Ice Shield/Armor were in the dungeon itself, so I wasted 15000 gil on those... I'm wondering if maybe I should ransack the other two dungeons first before taking on any of the Fiends?
Yes, that's what I'll do. It will build my levels and get me some desired gear (Avenger Sword!) and I should be able to deal with the Fiends in a relatively good fashion.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 25, 2015, 05:14:00 AM
So things are moving along well. Also did the Coral Sword have its attack adjusted? I recall it being weaker than the Ancient Sword in the previous version, now it matches it.
Ah, in Troia now the boy in the Chocobo Stables has the girl's text and the girl has Dummy text.
Eh... now when Troia is attacked a text box shows "Zeromus' true form shows!"
I think "people" may be spelled wrong when the Doctor says "The crystal is safe, as is our pepole" or something like that. May have been a trick of the eyes.
Ah, slight typo. When Golbez says "loyal lieutenant" there's an extra "n" in the middle of lieutenant.
These should be fixed now.
We worked out the bugs with the patch through the week but somehow, something undid the fix for the final battle freezing. Today I went into the thread now that the forum is back up and re-applied the fix and re-inserted the battles into the final sequence, but now the jumps are going wonkee again.
*Epic Facepalm* It's not broken, it's doing exactly what it's designed to do. It encounters an "if" statement and goes, "oh hey, an if statement. Is everyone dead? YES THEY ARE! ON TO THE NEXT EVENT!"
So that's fixed... heart attack averted! ^_^
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 25, 2015, 09:48:11 AM
Heh, yes I am glad to see that you remembered that conditional branch. I imagine that could cause some consternation had that not been recalled.
Alright then! I will download this and get right back to the game. As I mentioned I am in the next save point from where I originally lost my file and feeling much more secure, despite being a level or two lower.
There's Dr. Lugae! The trip through the Giant sort of spoiled that one for me.
Wow, you used the Change Character Graphic to Not be Cecil! First time that's been done, I know FFIV never does that.
Heh, I see you changed the fight a bit, Dr. Lugae seems to have tons of HP preventing you from killing him before he becomes Balnab-Z (well I'm sure if you attacked him enough he'd still fall, but still...)
Hacking Balnab's ROM file, eh? Haha!
Wow, that's a great reference to MP Underflow! Very illustrative.
upt Co worked exactly as one would expect, Reaction'ed out the enemy team. Now that was some great humor!
Wow, um... Laser is certainly more powerful than it originally was.
But he went down all the same. A little more difficult than original.
Ah, the Crystal Chamber, and it looks to be in its actual location now that I think on it.
Golbez just non-chalantly puts a crystal in the Altar and then slowly walks up to fight us, intimidating, heh.
Oh, oh wow... it's not a scripted battle any longer, thankfully Kain was in the air and the Shadow Dragon isn't using Demolish bit-by-bit.
Or... yes he is. I guess there's at first a window of chance before crushing it.
Expelled us from the Tower? I would wonder why Golbez didn't just kill us. Unless he pushed us off the tower but we were saved by Rosa? A little unclear what is happening there.
But that's the Tower of Babil down!
Since Cecil has mentioned "finding our friends" maybe I should check up on Rydia?
I forgot about the Blizzard Spear... maybe that would have been useful on the ascent.
Giott now says to go to Mysidia... since I noticed Cid and Rosa are nowhere to be found that party regrouping section may not have actually come yet. Besides crossing the Feymarch without Float is easier than Bahamut's Lagoon but still not an easy time.
Back to the surface! (Legitimately!)
I really enjoyed Porom lightly coaxing Cecil to go with her to see the Elder, it was very much in character and Cecil's guilt seems more pronounced which also works well, considering he likely would have felt the same trepidation had his circumstances not been forced in the original FFIV.
Ah? Is this the Paladin sidequest? Hmm, should I have stumbled in here?
Looks like it, can't get to the Moon without the Lunar Whale after all. Also nice use of the Floater Stone, I used a similar concept in Combat Boost with the Airship going down when you first reach the Underworld.
Serpent Road is overrun with spirits, hmm?
Holy Arrows only... interesting choice, and the Paladin gear, reasonable.
I have a suspicion on where the Floater Stone is, Magnes Cave, possibly?
In Troia the people in the hospital are acting like Tellah is still here... but both Edward and Tellah are missing.
Maybe Damcyan?
I can now loot the basement at least!
Another stairway...?
30000 GP is nice!
Hey, an Air Knife and more Yoichi Arrows! Always welcome!
Judging by its name I assume the Air Knife is Wind Elemental.
Oh, so that scene earlier with Edward meeting Anna one last time was removed for story purposes.
That is a good warning! I will take that into consideration.
So, it seems I should find the Floater Stone before I go about searching for my scattered team.
I guess I'll go see if Odin is available yet.
TARDIS, I at least know that's a Dr. Who reference, heh. I must say I was not actually expecting to get the other Airship.
Alright, now let's see if Odin is available...
Aww, a reference to Ricard that's very nice.
...Is this a prequel plug? Because I'm liking it!
Whew, a successful steal first try, was just a Potion.
Massacred! Also, that is probably the most expressive animation an enemy ever does in the game, I wonder why they didn't utilize that more?
Let's see what's going on in the Adamant Grotto...
Oh! It's a dungeon now! Neat!
I like the looks of this area quite a bit, and the entrance of splashing into water was well thought out!
Enemy's here don't seem too much of a threat.
Thor's Hammer! Awesome.
More powerful, doesn't provide any bonuses. I'll have to try it out though.
Well it seems like Thor's Hammer should cast a spell, but it never succeeds. Is the Item's Spell Power still set to 00?
Did not expect to find the Muramasa in a chest!
Seems as if Edge now deals more damage with weapons than Shurikens. I'll have him in the front row then.
Hmm, is Muramasa Dark Elemental? Looks to be, but I can't quite tell for certain.
The Blood Harp? I will hold onto that...
Very nice use of a Save Point there.
Whelp! There's the Adamant!
Oh hey! It's Yang! I'll leave that be though.
Triton's Dagger! Great!
And FFT's Slasher! Always a welcome reference.
Oddly enough the Triton Dagger, despite being Palom's de facto final weapon (In FFIVA) doesn't give a Wisdom Boost and like all Daggers only gives a +3 as far as I can tell.
Like Thor's Hammer the Triton's Dagger's Weapon Magic appears to do nothing.
I was curious to see the refusal message from Yang, it makes a good deal of sense. The Sea Ruby from the Antlion, haha. It works well enough.
Ah? Is the Slasher Ice Elemental? The sound and graphic sort of lead me to feel such.
That was a wonderful dungeon! Completely custom as far as I can tell. With some great rewards as well (the Triton's Dagger and Thor's Hammer may not be working as intended though).
I'll call it here for now, but I am enjoying all of the new side content in the overworld thus far!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 25, 2015, 10:44:24 AM
The warning will eventually be replaced with flags tracking whether you have room in your team or not and automatically prevent you from adding someone to a full party. It will probably still ask if you want to add them though.
I'm not telling you where to find the Floater; but if you think about it carefully, you should know where it is.
Thor's hammer and Triton's dagger are trying to cast Ramuh and Leviathan respectively. I have yet to debug them.
Slasher is ice for now. In an ideal world I'd give it a large crit rate or something instead but I don't think that's a thing in this game is it?
Glad you're enjoying this part of the game! It's definitely the highlight of the hack IMO; it's almost like FF6's world of ruin, or like the part in Chrono Trigger where the world opens up and you can do anything in any order. Unfortunately the Serpent Road is not 100% working but that should be the only thing.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 25, 2015, 07:48:35 PM
Thor's hammer and Triton's dagger are trying to cast Ramuh and Leviathan respectively. I have yet to debug them.
I'm not sure that it will be a simple matter. I could be wrong though, and it would be nice, but I don't think the Item Magic Pointer (which is a bit further down the normal Magic Pointer) actually includes the "Is it Black/White/Summon?" Changing it to do so, if even just for Summons, would be a rather simple task though if you'd like that done.
[quote Slasher is ice for now. In an ideal world I'd give it a large crit rate or something instead but I don't think that's a thing in this game is it? [/quote]
Bows get x3 Critical Hit Rate and base Critical Hit Rate is Innate+Level/?8+Weapon(x2)/Bow/(x3). It would require custom coding, but having a way for equipment to add to Critical Hit Rate doesn't seem improbable.
Quote
Glad you're enjoying this part of the game! It's definitely the highlight of the hack IMO; it's almost like FF6's world of ruin, or like the part in Chrono Trigger where the world opens up and you can do anything in any order. Unfortunately the Serpent Road is not 100% working but that should be the only thing.
I do love the World of Ruin along with the cadre of sidequests that open up after the Seaside Palace.
And we are back to it, next place to check will be Kokkol's to give him the Adamant Ore, then to the Magnes Cave.
Well, I've got a "Magnificent Greatsword" in the works.
Oh, Tellah's in the Magnes Cave, well now I know where to go to get him! So let's see... Edward/Tellah/Yang... Cid and Rosa are apparently still in the airship at the moment. Palom and Porom, Rydia's still in the Feymarch... alright then. That leaves one other location where it could be.
MacGiant in Eblan Cave, ouch...
Looks like there are a lot of Giant of Babil foes in Eblan Cave.
Oh...! That would explain it.
The Giant seems mostly the same, as mentioned before the Treasures are changed around quite a bit.
I was not expecting Edge to learn Quake... that could be some powerful stuff.
I'll remember to unequip Edge for the upcoming boss fight...
And down falls the CPU! And... since Palom was the only one left he gained 250000 Exp... hah. In one battle he learned all of the Level 3 spells.
Truth be told, I thought that would somehow get me the Floater Stone, since I recalled that Edge leaves right after it is done and I had thought this was part of the main plot?
Is the purpose of that purely to free up an optional slot?
Hm, let me think...
Oh, Cid was in the Dwarf Castle basement, so does that mean Rosa is somewhere in Baron...?
No, no it does not... is she still in the Dwarf Castle somewhere then?
Ah well, I'll find her eventually. With a free slot to the party, I'll go and get Tellah.
Tellah joins back at Level 20, but with some decent equipment at least.
Hah... I see that's the point of the Wooden Shield.
Heh, Wooden Hammer... it does make Porom usable here, and possibly in the front row.
Ah, so this is where the Break Blade was... I recalled it being in an earlier video.
Oh, oh wow! The Break Blade turns immediately to Stone! That's quite incredible!
Venom Axe is still metallic... but I just noticed that the Flame Spear (or probably any Elemental Weapon) is not!
Nice change from the Crystal Chamber. Looks like the Dark Elf still holds the place.
And I lost to the Dark Elf... hrm...
Bad luck there, a lot of too-late Item uses.
I noticed he was Very vulnerable to Comet, which means, as traditional, he is weak to Holy.
Much better done that time. Berserked Cecil, Hasted Porom, slowed the Dark Elf, I managed to get him before he cast Quake and Meteo. I do have to mention I like the reference that he has all of this powerful magic because of the tome. Nice touch.
And now Tellah has every spell! Well, only place I haven't really searched is Mt. Ordeals, but I don't think the game pushes for Cecil to become a Paladin? Otherwise all of those "If Dark Knight" at the Zeromus fight would be rather silly.
Off to Mt. Ordeals then!
Or... not. Hah, where have I not searched...?
It would complete the FFI Reference, but I can't think of any place there I didn't search...
Haha! I should have known, as mention it completes the reference. Also let me know if you'd like me to edit out anything pertaining to the Floater Stone's Location, just in case you don't want it given away. I tried to be vague about it, though maybe it's a little too vague especially for those who didn't get the reference, I think someone, somewhere should mention something about it.
You did mention that the Serpent Road is still a little incomplete though the Elder did mention it as a location now, somehow making "Travel easier".
...Oh... The Serpent Road is Evil Wall, did not see that one coming.
Nice Holy for 5600 damage Tellah!
Ah... it was a way to get rid of the Twins from the party. As you mentioned the Serpent Road isn't complete yet. I suppose I will leave things there alone as I reload my save, dequip the Twins, and then re-get rid of them... or not... hmm, maybe this playthrough I'll use the Twins and Tellah. But how do I get rid of Kain? Maybe something around Baron will help with that.
Well for now I'll ascend Mt. Ordeals, I won't go through with the Class Change obviously though.
Haha! "This is your trial Cecil..." (Avenger makes it impossible to deal more than 1 Damage to Undead or to change equipment.)
"How can darkness overcome darkness..." With Ice-Balls and Lit-Bolts of course!
While I'm going to reset after this "But I don't wanna be a Paladin, Daddy!" It was a really neat sequence, I do think you may want to throw more enemy formations in there, but the Zombie one is pretty cleverly made, "IF Formation is X than use Bio" Nice touch!
While I love the use of music in this fight, it does cut out eventually and restarts rather abruptly.
Well, I did win the fight with just Kain, and a vastly underleveled Tellah, but I do need to suggest that there's a Yes/No Option for this as well. Since losing access to the Dark Swords without much prior warning for instance a normal player, if they didn't want to become a Paladin would go there to loot the place and then find themselves being turned into a Paladin against their will.
The Sage Staff is on the Mountain... I'll keep that in mind.
Ah right, the Dwarves in the Dwarven Hospital say "He shouldn't have done such thing" (Not a typo), clearly unchanged text I believe.
And this is where I'll call it for now. Still no idea where Rosa is or Kain's departure point, but I'll keep looking, though some hints for those might be nice...
Also I noticed the entire point of Agart's conversations is Gone since they now have no plot relevance compared to the "puzzle" they originally had, perhaps they should mention the sidequest areas? The original Agart (as in the proper translations) had a lot of "Rumor has it..." so it would fit quite perfectly, in my opinion.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 26, 2015, 05:35:55 AM
I'm not sure that it will be a simple matter. I could be wrong though, and it would be nice, but I don't think the Item Magic Pointer (which is a bit further down the normal Magic Pointer) actually includes the "Is it Black/White/Summon?" Changing it to do so, if even just for Summons, would be a rather simple task though if you'd like that done.
Thanks, but at least for now, I think I'll just assign them different spells.
Bows get x3 Critical Hit Rate and base Critical Hit Rate is Innate+Level/?8+Weapon(x2)/Bow/(x3). It would require custom coding, but having a way for equipment to add to Critical Hit Rate doesn't seem improbable.
I think for now I'll leave it alone. It makes Kain's Blizzard spear a bit worse... but it does give Cid some access to an ice weapon.
Oh, Tellah's in the Magnes Cave, well now I know where to go to get him! So let's see... Edward/Tellah/Yang... Cid and Rosa are apparently still in the airship at the moment. Palom and Porom, Rydia's still in the Feymarch... alright then. That leaves one other location where it could be.
I guess it's not clear from the plot scene (which I recognize still needs a little touching up), but Cid and Rosa never came on the airship with you. It seems you found Cid, but since I haven't updated the Dwarves' text yet you might have trouble finding Rosa. In future versions they'll give a hint as to where she is. Should I tell you or leave you to explore?
Tellah joins back at Level 20, but with some decent equipment at least.
I was completely out of shadow slots, so I was like, "who doesn't mind joining at a fixed level", and I figured, given the fact that you're unlikely to level him much if at all during the first part with him, and even if you do, it makes sense that he might go back down a little after draining himself with that Meteo casting, Tellah seemed like the best choice. It also makes this dungeon more challenging despite having weaker foes.
Venom Axe is still metallic... but I just noticed that the Flame Spear (or probably any Elemental Weapon) is not!
Spears are non metallic. Kain would otherwise have literally nothing to do. At least Cecil and Edge can cast spells and such, Cid gets a wooden hammer in the dungeon, Yang can punch, everyone else can cast magic or use some kind of command or something. I suppose alternatively I could put a wooden spear in a chest on that first floor or something...
Much better done that time. Berserked Cecil, Hasted Porom, slowed the Dark Elf, I managed to get him before he cast Quake and Meteo. I do have to mention I like the reference that he has all of this powerful magic because of the tome. Nice touch.
Thanks! That's what I was trying to go for. Now I just need to remember to make a new palette-swap graphic for the "Wizard" chest guards.
Haha! I should have known, as mention it completes the reference. Also let me know if you'd like me to edit out anything pertaining to the Floater Stone's Location, just in case you don't want it given away. I tried to be vague about it, though maybe it's a little too vague especially for those who didn't get the reference, I think someone, somewhere should mention something about it.
Someone in Tomra maybe. Like the "I am a miner" guy. Maybe after Golbez activates the tower he can start saying something like "I found a strange rock in the mines and didn't know what to do with it so I gave it to the King"
You did mention that the Serpent Road is still a little incomplete though the Elder did mention it as a location now, somehow making "Travel easier".
Ah... it was a way to get rid of the Twins from the party. As you mentioned the Serpent Road isn't complete yet. I suppose I will leave things there alone as I reload my save, dequip the Twins, and then re-get rid of them... or not... hmm, maybe this playthrough I'll use the Twins and Tellah. But how do I get rid of Kain? Maybe something around Baron will help with that.
Inside there are a bunch of teleporters which in future will lead to all the different major locations on the overworld. Each is guarded by a Trap Door. Most of them work but some of them don't; however most of them also don't have a way back to Mysidia. If this is 0.4 you're playing and not 0.5 then even going forward might not work and the trap doors might deactivate the wrong placements. But you can certainly use it as a quick way to grind f.ex. Tellah (or Paladin if you go that route) up a few levels.
While I'm going to reset after this "But I don't wanna be a Paladin, Daddy!" It was a really neat sequence, I do think you may want to throw more enemy formations in there, but the Zombie one is pretty cleverly made, "IF Formation is X than use Bio" Nice touch!
Trouble with adding more formations in there is I would need to free up more solobattles, which, as you will probably see later, are currently being used for something much more interesting.
While I love the use of music in this fight, it does cut out eventually and restarts rather abruptly.
It's "Ending Part 3" so unfortunately it doesn't loop. My options are: (a) don't use it, (b) do what I'm doing, (c) let it run out, leaving silence for the rest of the fight. So I opted for B.
Well, I did win the fight with just Kain, and a vastly underleveled Tellah, but I do need to suggest that there's a Yes/No Option for this as well. Since losing access to the Dark Swords without much prior warning for instance a normal player, if they didn't want to become a Paladin would go there to loot the place and then find themselves being turned into a Paladin against their will.
Good idea. Also in that fight, Cecil's cover is key. That dragon hits everyone else for like 3 digit damage but Cecil usually only takes 2 digit damage if that, thanks to his Paladin Shield being strong vs. Zombies (and since you did Edge's sidequest you probably have the Defender to equip mid-battle to give him a Vit buff too). "Protect your friends" :wink:
Also I noticed the entire point of Agart's conversations is Gone since they now have no plot relevance compared to the "puzzle" they originally had, perhaps they should mention the sidequest areas? The original Agart (as in the proper translations) had a lot of "Rumor has it..." so it would fit quite perfectly, in my opinion.
Good idea; I'll probably do that!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 26, 2015, 06:40:28 AM
I don't have much time before work today, but I did want to find some things...
Well, I did find Rosa. It was in the one place I hadn't searched, Bahamut's Lagoon. Yes, that definitely needs a bit of clearing up on why she went there in the first place.
And OctoSoul murders my entire party before I even get an attack in... very similar to what was happening with Zeromus before I found that fix. What formation did you change that to, out of curiosity?
Now how to get rid of Kain...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 26, 2015, 08:43:30 AM
Er come to think of it, OctoSoul might be Formation 255 D:
Rosa will explain after the fight what happened, but I'll probably have a dwarf in the castle mention something like "Heard there was a monster attacking Bahamut's Shrine; Rosa took off on her own to go slay it"
To get rid of Kain, go the one place you still haven't been :wink:
Anyway I'll fix up that battle and post an update once I get home.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 26, 2015, 06:05:57 PM
Er come to think of it, OctoSoul might be Formation 255 D:
Rosa will explain after the fight what happened, but I'll probably have a dwarf in the castle mention something like "Heard there was a monster attacking Bahamut's Shrine; Rosa took off on her own to go slay it"
To get rid of Kain, go the one place you still haven't been :wink:
Anyway I'll fix up that battle and post an update once I get home.
Ah, that could be the issue there, haha.
Well, that seems to hint that I need to head for the Moon, so let's get to it, after a few pit stops...
Oh yes, a slight oversight, you can still ascend and descend the Misty Mountains and... well actually no. I was going to say you'd have no way back, but that's not true because you can take a Chocobo to get the Black Chocobo and take that near the Airship, so nevermind.
Well! I defeated Odin, still has very little HP, since Palom's Bolt-3 and a couple Jumps and Attacks from Cecil and Kain managed to take him out. I wanted to do that with Kain in the party to see if there were any other special lines for him.
Oh, it's Excalibur, *grumble, grumble*....
Though now I'm confused, since Odin's wife was also a Paladin and the Excalibur apparently belonged to Cecil's Mother wouldn't that imply that Odin was his biological father in this? If such is the case, why is he referred to as just "raising" Cecil, and why isn't Cecil a proper Prince, if his actual father is the King? Unless there's a piece there that I'm not seeing.
When you defeat Odin and try to leave you get stopped by the "go to the land of Summoned Monsters" trigger (only happens once). I hope that's just an event flag mix up and nothing wrong with the Conditional partch...
Oh, oh Mysidia sells X-Potions, fantastic! It also sells DryEthers and Elixirs for those who are bleeding cash.
And we are off! Well prepared in every way.
I decided that my final party (if I can get rid of Kain...) will be Palom/Porom/Tellah/Edward very lightly clothed party, but it should work well enough.
Ah... umm... talking to the Hummingways warps me in front of Eblan.
That shop seems relatively the same. Whistles are as expensive as always.
Very well then, let's see what Bahamut is up to...
The Moon enemies are slightly tough, but we can handle them well enough now.
No spiked encounters with Behemoths and a Save Point in a dungeon that has superior equipment to what it had in the original? I dare say that the Lair of the Father is easier in this mod than the original!
Oh! Having Kain deal something with the Dragon Eidolon makes a great deal of sense! I also like that Cecil gets abruptly cut off by Bahamut.
Also, I love the Shakespearean flair to Bahamut's text making him seem like he is an ancient being (FFXII does a similar thing with its gods speaking in Iambic Pentameter.)
Ah, a reference to FFIVA! Time to get killed by Bahamut, quite likely.
Well, that took a few tries, but I finally got the timing right.
Though I do have to say, I think there should be some sort of tangible reward for giving up party members instead of just freeing up their slots. It seems rather strange to undertake a sidequest to Get Rid of party members with nothing to show for it. (Though maybe I'm talking a little too quick, maybe there are rewards down the line?)
Alright, now that Kain is gone it is time to grab Edward and continue on!
Ah, an interesting idea with a fake Anna spirit keeping Edward enthralled there. I do think the lines may need a little work, Edward saying that "he misses Anna so much" and then her appearing 20 seconds later seems a bit odd. Also Tellah should really have a couple of lines (or an NPC?) here since his entire arc revolved around Anna.
Oh.. she's Undead, thought she was a Spirit (note to self: don't use the Blood Sword.)
So she wasn't fake. Interesting... but that was a pretty intense boss fight! Her physical attacks deal some hefty damage and her status magics can't be bypassed like in the original. Harm deals nearly 7000 damage to her and again Porom was the star of the show.
The Bard rejoins us at Level 49! I imagine a lot of that is from Palom soloing the CPU.
Now with the party prepared I am ready for the Moon!
...Only now do I realize my folly. I have no other proper person for the front row... whoops.
Hmm, going back to Bahamut, Kain is gone, and Bahamut only says "T", slightly unfinished scenario then?
Porom learns Float at 43... good to know.
Edward's new songs are pretty interesting!
...I hope Dirge isn't casting Count on foes though, Count doesn't work properly on more than two foes and the game will lock up not knowing how to deal with more than two foes killed by Count during a battle... but it does not appear to be Count. Is it Curse? That would make a good deal of sense.
Magic Song is incredible and makes him a great partner to Tellah who won't have to constantly Osmose to get back his MP with Edward in the party.
Image Song takes a Long time, but it's worth it! Blink on the entire party? Sign me up!
I see Reaction was removed from Grenades. Good.
Onto the Lunar Palace now that Tellah is Level 30.
The Apollo Harp! Very nice!
Murasame for Edge, important to bear in mind...
And the Holy Spear... I was wondering where that got to...
And with that I am in front of the Lunar Palace, which I will approach later.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 26, 2015, 06:57:49 PM
Though now I'm confused, since Odin's wife was also a Paladin and the Excalibur apparently belonged to Cecil's Mother wouldn't that imply that Odin was his biological father in this? If such is the case, why is he referred to as just "raising" Cecil, and why isn't Cecil a proper Prince, if his actual father is the King? Unless there's a piece there that I'm not seeing.
I'm not the best at writing dialogue... the idea is that Odin and his wife raised Cecil; they're not his biological parents but he would still have called them "mother" and "father" and they would refer to themselves as such as well. Much like Superman would call Martha Kent his "mother".
When you defeat Odin and try to leave you get stopped by the "go to the land of Summoned Monsters" trigger (only happens once). I hope that's just an event flag mix up and nothing wrong with the Conditional partch...
I think that's probably just where you didn't trigger it the first time, before going to the underworld. That's a simple trigger condition fix.
I decided that my final party (if I can get rid of Kain...) will be Palom/Porom/Tellah/Edward very lightly clothed party, but it should work well enough.
Front row hammer Porom? POW, POW! Sounds like a very healing-heavy party. Staying as a Dark Knight?
No spiked encounters with Behemoths and a Save Point in a dungeon that has superior equipment to what it had in the original? I dare say that the Lair of the Father is easier in this mod than the original!
Also, I love the Shakespearean flair to Bahamut's text making him seem like he is an ancient being (FFXII does a similar thing with its gods speaking in Iambic Pentameter.)
Thanks! There's another reference in his dialogue which you may or may not get.
Ah, a reference to FFIVA! Time to get killed by Bahamut, quite likely.
Well, that took a few tries, but I finally got the timing right.
I loved that battle in FF4A! This one doesn't let you can't cheat with lunar curtains either!
Unfortunately there seem to be some graphical oddities with his megaflare while you're in the air, like he just shakes instead of opening his wings. Having fought the battle you probably know what I'm talking about. It's not critical (the battle is completely functional, which is my main concern) but would be nice to have it look correct as well.
Though I do have to say, I think there should be some sort of tangible reward for giving up party members instead of just freeing up their slots. It seems rather strange to undertake a sidequest to Get Rid of party members with nothing to show for it. (Though maybe I'm talking a little too quick, maybe there are rewards down the line?)
I'm open to suggestions!
Incidentally, doing it this way allows you to ditch your entire party and go SOLO CECIL if you're super brave!! I've actually been thinking of having certain special things happen in certain events if you're alone, once I get the party size tracking flags implemented.
Ah, an interesting idea with a fake Anna spirit keeping Edward enthralled there. I do think the lines may need a little work, Edward saying that "he misses Anna so much" and then her appearing 20 seconds later seems a bit odd.
Well she appears but she's still just a spirit and not a physical person that he can have a real relationship with.
So she wasn't fake. Interesting... but that was a pretty intense boss fight! Her physical attacks deal some hefty damage and her status magics can't be bypassed like in the original. Harm deals nearly 7000 damage to her and again Porom was the star of the show.
If you have a paladin in your team, the Wightslayer completely steals the show. Wrecks the OctoSoul something fierce too.
...I hope Dirge isn't casting Count on foes though, Count doesn't work properly on more than two foes and the game will lock up not knowing how to deal with more than two foes killed by Count during a battle... but it does not appear to be Count. Is it Curse? That would make a good deal of sense.
It's undead damage. Inspired from FF5's song whose name I forgot.
I'm not the best at writing dialogue... the idea is that Odin and his wife raised Cecil; they're not his biological parents but he would still have called them "mother" and "father" and they would refer to themselves as such as well. Much like Superman would call Martha Kent his "mother".
Oh don't worry about it. For the most part your script has been spot on. Just a little bit confused there since the DS version has the King of Baron knowing Cecilia, canonically Cecil's mom, so I wasn't sure what the implication there was. That clears it up though, also an interesting idea to include a Queen of Baron, I never thought of that. Probably owing to the DS version of the game I always assumed the King let his slightly implied, but not really, love for Cecilia smolder until his death. Did she meet a natural end then?
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I think that's probably just where you didn't trigger it the first time, before going to the underworld. That's a simple trigger condition fix.
Oh, good point. I never did do that this run.
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Front row hammer Porom? POW, POW! Sounds like a very healing-heavy party. Staying as a Dark Knight?
I am indeed staying a Dark Knight, Paladin Cecil will likely be the next test run as I'll likely take the normal final five to see how that party works in this version. (I have a savestate right before Lugae so it won't be too difficult re-reaching that point.) As for the front row... I have Palom there currently because of his higher HP, but maybe Porom would newly work. It's a little difficult to say, haha.
Also, I love the Shakespearean flair to Bahamut's text making him seem like he is an ancient being (FFXII does a similar thing with its gods speaking in Iambic Pentameter.)
Thanks! There's another reference in his dialogue which you may or may not get.
Hmm, I feel I missed the reference then, unless you meant the Test of Courage being a reference to Castle Ordeals and the Symbol of Courage (Rat's Tail)?
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I loved that battle in FF4A! This one doesn't let you can't cheat with lunar curtains either!
Unfortunately there seem to be some graphical oddities with his megaflare while you're in the air, like he just shakes instead of opening his wings. Having fought the battle you probably know what I'm talking about. It's not critical (the battle is completely functional, which is my main concern) but would be nice to have it look correct as well.
It is strange. I noticed that if you Jump sometimes the game will just skip partial counting. as if because there is no one there, the text box didn't play. I imagine its a similar case with Megaflare. It is my bet that his position is only changed for as long as the Megaflare is occurring, but because it doesn't he just slightly shakes.
Though I do have to say, I think there should be some sort of tangible reward for giving up party members instead of just freeing up their slots. It seems rather strange to undertake a sidequest to Get Rid of party members with nothing to show for it. (Though maybe I'm talking a little too quick, maybe there are rewards down the line?)
I'm open to suggestions!
Incidentally, doing it this way allows you to ditch your entire party and go SOLO CECIL if you're super brave!! I've actually been thinking of having certain special things happen in certain events if you're alone, once I get the party size tracking flags implemented.
That sounds awesome! I always like the idea of trying to solo in FF games, as for suggestion... maybe some gear for Cecil depending on whether he's a Dark Knight or Paladin? For instance the Twins leaving (or being unpetrified... if that is actually an event) may yield a special accessory for Cecil that gives him 15 Wisdom and Will, allowing him to have Magical Defense Multipliers? I noticed that in FFIV the Twins seems to have some sort of pendants on their battle sprites, but nothing has ever explained what that is about.
Edge could give Cecil some kind of Shield that he says he obtained while chasing Lugae that is weaker than the Diamond Shield, but gives several status resistances and resists Machines called the "Babil Shield"? Maybe raise Vitality as well?
I think in Kain's case the prize should come from Bahamut. Since Kain wouldn't have anything to give Cecil, possibly a Dragon Sword? Would not be as powerful as many of the current swords, but would deal x4 damage to Dragons and cast Osmose at a pretty good tick if used as an item. Bahamut could say something like "I see the loss of thy friend wounds you. I can only offer thou this in exchange for his period away."
Ah, an interesting idea with a fake Anna spirit keeping Edward enthralled there. I do think the lines may need a little work, Edward saying that "he misses Anna so much" and then her appearing 20 seconds later seems a bit odd.
Well she appears but she's still just a spirit and not a physical person that he can have a real relationship with.
True, I wonder if maybe the text can be guided a little more to show that something is wrong with Edward, maybe something like, "Cecil: Why now? Did you not fight by our side to prevent others from her fate? What changed?" Then the issue of Anna's spirit could be made.
...I hope Dirge isn't casting Count on foes though, Count doesn't work properly on more than two foes and the game will lock up not knowing how to deal with more than two foes killed by Count during a battle... but it does not appear to be Count. Is it Curse? That would make a good deal of sense.
It's undead damage. Inspired from FF5's song whose name I forgot.
Heh, It's called Requiem in FFV. I can see why you wouldn't want to use that name twice. A Dirge is similar as well. The Death graphic though seems a little misleading for that sort of effect.
And with that I am in front of the Lunar Palace, which I will approach later.
I have a feeling you know what you're in for when you enter... :wink:
I do indeed... let's do this!
Wh-wha? Scarmiglione absorbs Holy?
I was not expecting Bio to deal 9999 damage to Draghinazzo! Powerful stuff there!
And I lost to Malacoda, Alichino kind of threw me for a loop and his Reflect carried over onto Malacoda, I know now I need to kill Alicino with non-targeted magics ASAP!
Killed by Ciriatto this time, an unlucky Dark Holy on Porom after Angel Song.
Lost to Malacoda again, this time because I hit her with an Elemental Heal which caused her to revert back to Valvalis and then Alicino and I handled it all rather poorly forgetting Reflect (again!)
It's finally over! It was a little odd though, I had defeated Malacoda and it reverted back to Barbariccia, then all the way until Alicino, though when he died the second time, that was it. A bit strange.
Oh hey! Kain to the rescue again! Also great in-story use of the Jump command! Even though he's left the party he is still playing his part! I love it!
Character dependent lines, awesome!
Hmm, he's just standing there, he'll counter normal attacks and some magic...
Oh now he's fighting.
Gah! Dark Wave?! That was painful.
Well that wasn't so bad. He seemed really slow. Only attacking a couple of times, which was strange, considering he Is Golbez, all in all more fulfilling than the original's battle.
So Golbez goes to Mysidia to atone, an interesting twist of events though, Golbez seems to just be a powerful sorcerer who also is a decent wordsmith, I liked the bit about "no monsters, no followers" as it really does show him in a rather pathetic state.
When I walk up to the Lunarian Throne the music changes to the Red Wings, the screen goes black, then I'm put right back there. Part of an unfinished event?
Well those Crystal titles sure have them out to be quite powerful creations indeed! But this is where you told me to stop so I shall, it's been great so far!
:edit: I had realized I forgot to see what weapon Kokkol had for me after giving him the Adamant and he still says "come back later!" unless there's a part after the ?first trip? through the Lunar Subterrane there isn't really a later to refer to. Or is this what you meant by his sidequest being unfinished?
Hmm, the Elder still says to go to the Moon to stop Golbez, maybe Golbez just hasn't made it to Mysidia yet then?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on May 27, 2015, 10:41:16 AM
The line "courage and wit have served thee well" is a reference to Dragon Warrior. There's also the more general reference of Bahamut testing your courage.
Good ideas on the prizes. I'll see what I can do to fit something in.
Golbez starts off slow to give you a chance to recover from just having fought the elements and possibly the shadow dragon with no break.
I think what you experienced at the throne was a trigger tile with no associated event. Another easy fix.
Kokkol is making a holy sword. He'll finish when you become a paladin.
Everything past where you are is unfinished. You should be able to tackle the lunar subterran but some dialogs will outright lie to you and I can't guarantee that the final battles won't be floating imps. I might not get a chance to upload for a while and even longer before I get around to polishing off the final dungeon and finishing the ending, so if you want to plow ahead, by all means go ahead.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on May 27, 2015, 01:27:52 PM
Golbez starts off slow to give you a chance to recover from just having fought the elements and possibly the shadow dragon with no break.
Hmm, a better idea perhaps may be something like this... start of battle, a line from Golbez "I will let you pray before the end." Then after a certain amount of time has passed (to prevent players from spamming Protect/Shell) or "If Damaged and Condition Flag is 0", "Let us begin!" Change to the rest of his normal attack pattern. Since the amount of time where he's slow may be a bit too long.
Quote
Everything past where you are is unfinished. You should be able to tackle the lunar subterran but some dialogs will outright lie to you and I can't guarantee that the final battles won't be floating imps. I might not get a chance to upload for a while and even longer before I get around to polishing off the final dungeon and finishing the ending, so if you want to plow ahead, by all means go ahead.
Haha! Sound amusing, I'll take a crack at it then, see what the ending holds.
Ah, the Seraphim Staff, very nice.
Oh, there's still a blade here, I was not expecting that.
Ah, Pale Dim is weak to Dark, while dealing tremendous amounts of counter-attack elemental damage otherwise. I won only after figuring that out. It was close though.
And the Hades Armor, eh? Interesting... considering it was shown to be a blade and was mentioned As a blade, haha!
Looks like it gives +5 Wisdom, which currently gives Cecil just enough Wisdom/Will to gain x1 Magic Defense multiplier! (with the Chaos Blade equipped)
Hmm, well there's the Masamune.
Level 48 Porom learns Cure 4, quite important to keep in mind!
Wow! Thief's Gloves gives +15 Agility! Very impressive! That will do well with Front Row Porom's Agility and give her an extra Attack Multiplier to boot.
Well, ran into my first Behemoth and it seems they really do just stand there and wait for the Image Song to work.
Ah, the Stardust Rod! Fun fact, in FFIV DS this deals a guaranteed 9999 but it has a very long charge time.
Deals roughly 1000-1500 in this, not bad for a free cast!
My resources of MP were mostly out so I decided to avoid all chests from the second part of the dungeon to the save point, since I don't want to lose my progress. I have made it to the save point, completely healed up and good to go!
I'll head back up and grab the chests, then proceed onwards after I get home from work.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 01, 2015, 12:25:23 PM
And we're Finally back! I'll look to finish this after I get home from work tonight!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 02, 2015, 01:24:34 AM
You've really changed up Plague, it is a surprisingly intense battle trying to keep everyone from being petrified and constantly using Remedy. He seemed weak to Ice, which was interesting. Wow! The Hades Helm gives Cecil, crazy defense! It does kill his magic defense though, compared to the Headband.
The Lunar Dragons take a Beating from the Apollo Harp! 6000 damage! Very impressive.
Their Reflect does eventually run out of steam though and they keep casting Ice-3 on themselves.
Then when one of them dies, the other doesn't do anything
Oh, the event itself gives the item now. Neat.
Unfortunately if I want Cecil to have x8 Attack Multipliers I can't give up the Gauntlet slot.
Did not expect the Ribbons to still be there actually...
Whoa! Was not expecting the Ribbons to give a +5 Stat Boost to All Stats!
...Did I just get super lucky? I just fought the Kary/Warlock encounter from a chest and got two items. One is the Masamune, which I already have, and the other is the Ninja suit... which I already have.
Oh well, it means that Porom can have another Attack Multiplier for the front row!
At Level 41 Tellah finally has enough MP to cast Meteo!
Um... from a Chest Behemoth Battle I just got 10 Artemis Bows. I take it a slight mix up in ranges?
You dealt with the Wyvern in a really smart way, even including a counter to Dispel! Very impressive work. My strategy was to Berserk Edward and Cecil and let those two have at him, while I kept the Reflect down with Dispel, despite the slight healing he was doing for himself. It was a rather intense fight, and again it shows your strength in building timing based battles.
And the Deathbringer sword is mine!
Wow!! Cecil's stats have skyrocketed! 15 to all stats, except for Will, this surprisingly boosts his Wisdom high enough that he has x2 Magic Defense multipliers!
Holy Spear from Chest, reasonable enough.
The Lord's Robe increases Wisdom and Will by 15 Each? That's a really great item!
Alright! Porom learned Arise!
And what's this? The Fiery Hammer?
It... provides no bonuses, probably Fire Elemental and judging from what you described of Thor's Hammer will fail to cast Ifrit. Granted a Fire Elemental Hammer does have its perks...
Or not! Wow! It casts Flare! As in Flare Sledgehammer, dealing 4000+ damage on use! Porom just became de facto damage dealer alongside Edward (now there's two things I thought I'd never say)
Oh awesome! The Loki Harp!
Looks like it still has x4 damage against all enemy types, awesome!
The Mirage Robe is a nice upgrade for Edward.
Rune Axe, nice to keep in mind for Kain and Cid.
Now the dungeon up until the savepoint has been fully looted! It is time to finish this!
Porom learned Holy at 55! Better late, than never.
EvilMask's are jokes with Dispel! (The same applied to the DS version as well)
Level 58 Palom learns Flare! Alright!
Yet another Ribbon in the Lunar Subterrane! Normally this is a Fuma Shuriken as I recall.
Ogopogo was pretty simple. Not really much more to add than that.
A Berserked Porom dealt 9999 damage to an EvilMask and it was Glorious!!
Another Mirage Robe? Hmm, alright.
More Robe of Lords, fantastic!
Strength Gloves! Now that's pretty fantastic! While it does shoot Porom's speed, it does give her more attack multipliers!
I like the savepoint right before the final floors, it was good idea in EasyType, a good idea in Project II and it's a fine idea here.
Well, I think it's pretty easy to see what spell Harm replaced, as it is all Breath does instead of Scan.
And Yang's sprite is standing where Cecil ends up, an NPC visibility mix up?
Oh that is neat! Because my Cecil is still a Dark Knight the "man of Darkness" plot point is passed onto him! That makes a lot of sense!
...I am then warped to the Lunar Whale. Which means something must have went terribly, terribly wrong.
...does this have something to do with the entire party being dead? If so I can do a quick check into the event and change it so that at least Cecil is alive when the next "IF" flag is checked.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 02, 2015, 10:48:08 AM
I thought I fixed the 10 bow thing... I'll look into it tonight.
Yang shouldn't be there and he wasn't for me, but that might have to do with the fact that I picked him up whereas you skipped him. I'll look into it.
The Lunar Whale thing is what I was panicking about a few posts ago. I'll fix it tonight and upload.
Since you've basically seen more or less what I have done of the game, or what you could in a single pass, what is your overall take on it?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 02, 2015, 11:33:39 AM
I thought I fixed the 10 bow thing... I'll look into it tonight.
Yang shouldn't be there and he wasn't for me, but that might have to do with the fact that I picked him up whereas you skipped him. I'll look into it.
The Lunar Whale thing is what I was panicking about a few posts ago. I'll fix it tonight and upload.
Since you've basically seen more or less what I have done of the game, or what you could in a single pass, what is your overall take on it?
All in all I loved it! It was a neat take on the classic plot of FFIV and for the most part you used the basic tools of the very game itself (one or two ASM hacks not withstanding) to show that the original system still has its merits! I am surprised the Shadow Mod was not included though, I take it the project was just a little too far along to make good use of it at the time? If such were done you wouldn't have these almost odd "Don't embark on saving the King of Fabul if you don't want Yang on your team!" It's just a little strange, I will admit.
There's also a little bit of oddity in the story setup. Especially when you have Tellah in the party, I can't see him just going along with Cecil's naive "Go and ask the Elder for forgiveness" line after you've defeated Golbez. That part rang just a little bit strange, considering how dogged Golbez has been on the part in this version and his "I was being controlled!" quip may not convince some of the more hardliners in the party like Cid, Tellah, Kain, or even this version's Rosa. Zeromus also seems a little bit more out of nowhere than he did in the original, but I don't know of a way to fix that part.
Aside from that though I loved the changes to the story and they all worked out very well and despite being a veteran of FFIV I didn't know where the story was headed next and it kept me on my toes all throughout!
Now, I am curious to know how many spare maps you have left, because I really like the party choice, but the issue I find with it is that this party is only around for 3 or 4 dungeons. I was wondering if you may want to add an additional area before the final floors of the Lunar Subterrane, perhaps the "Zemus Zone" that seemed to be planned for the original? I'm thinking something along the lines of FFV's "Void" that had a large collection of different settings before you emerged in the end, this way it gives the final party choice that little extra "oomph!" which will really make the party acquiring dynamic stand out.
I have noticed that FuSoYa is nowhere to be seen. Does this mean that you're planning for a new party member somewhere down the line?
Another thing I really enjoyed was how the five treasures in the Lunar Subterrane were the Dark Knight's best equipment. Though I'm surprised you went with the names of the Level 2 Armor, instead of the Level 3 Demon Armor? In addition the Hades Shield kind of pales in comparison to the Dragon Shield, as far as I can make out, to the Dragon Shield, it only gives one or two more defense, the 5 Wisdom, but doesn't have the Elemental Resistances or Dragon Resistances which is Imperative at this late stage.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 02, 2015, 01:16:29 PM
The shadow mod was a self-imposed limitation. It's obvious the fun you can have if you hack the game to be able to remember everyone's stats, but I wanted to demonstrate that you can still make a great hack without it, and even one that lets you pick your final party!
I love the idea of an extended final dungeon. More chance to level your chosen team without feeling like grinding. I have lots of unused maps but I'm not sure how much map space I have.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 02, 2015, 01:43:27 PM
The shadow mod was a self-imposed limitation. It's obvious the fun you can have if you hack the game to be able to remember everyone's stats, but I wanted to demonstrate that you can still make a great hack without it, and even one that lets you pick your final party!
I love the idea of an extended final dungeon. More chance to level your chosen team without feeling like grinding. I have lots of unused maps but I'm not sure how much map space I have.
I agree, you did an amazing job with sticking to mostly already programmed setups and that you set up a final party without a Shadow Mod is also rather special!
Ah, Map Space... well. that should be able to be told from looking where your last actual map is and counting down from there, that would be a neat little addition to the editor to know how much map space is left or even how much space each map takes.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: chillyfeez on June 02, 2015, 05:08:37 PM
If I'm not mistaken, FF4kster does tell you how much map space is left, no?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 02, 2015, 06:25:46 PM
I forgot to mention, I got rid of FuSoYa completely; he serves no purpose now that Tellah survives, and felt a little tacked on, even in the original. I also needed actors ^_^;
Anyway, yes FF4kster tells you how much map space is left in the map editor ("Room"; though now that I think about it that could be an ambiguous label). What I was getting at with my comment though was more the fact that map space is the more relevant resource for me than number of free maps. I may also run into space limitations with triggers. I've already had to hijack a couple of overworld ones to get the serpent road working.
Anyway the above patch won't fix Yang but it should fix the rest of the stuff, including undummying what I have done of the ending. It will stop abruptly during the Baron throne room sequence, so that's not a bug that's just me not having it finished yet. I got some good plans. Also there will be more leading up to it that I still haven't written.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: elvind on June 02, 2015, 07:06:40 PM
Long time lurker, first time poster.
Been playing through your hack and absolutely love it! I just got Palom and Porom.
I really, really like that it's taking awhile to get the airship, and that you're required to use the black chocobo for more than just the magnetic cave.
Love that Edward is actually useful. He made my final team in FF4A and TAY (yay Android remake! Sure, they just reused the FF4 engine, but hey, it's FF4!). He and Golbez are my two favorite characters. I can't wait to get him back! (I read through Grimoire's let's play and got very excited to play it, so I've got an idea of what's coming up next).
I chuckled at the Captain Planet reference.
Gave me the drive to make a hack that won't end up as a spoof! ... we'll see how long those good intentions last.
Anyway, thanks to you and everyone for ff4kster and the awesome hack!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 02, 2015, 08:32:25 PM
I forgot to mention, I got rid of FuSoYa completely; he serves no purpose now that Tellah survives, and felt a little tacked on, even in the original. I also needed actors ^_^;
Anyway, yes FF4kster tells you how much map space is left in the map editor ("Room"; though now that I think about it that could be an ambiguous label). What I was getting at with my comment though was more the fact that map space is the more relevant resource for me than number of free maps. I may also run into space limitations with triggers. I've already had to hijack a couple of overworld ones to get the serpent road working.
Anyway the above patch won't fix Yang but it should fix the rest of the stuff, including undummying what I have done of the ending. It will stop abruptly during the Baron throne room sequence, so that's not a bug that's just me not having it finished yet. I got some good plans. Also there will be more leading up to it that I still haven't written.
So that's what "Room" is. I thought it was some sort of incomplete feature that told the user what room number they were currently editing (which would be a bit redundant because of the numerical index) nice touch!
Triggers are fairly tricky, Event Triggers can be a bit of trouble all in all, there is a bit of free space for them though which I don't think the editor can utilize at the moment that could easily let you add more in. Normal triggers shouldn't be too much of an issue, especially since these would be Underworld Maps so space for them should be rather abundant.
That's reasonable, though don't forget the only thing special about Golbez and Anna's actors are what they link to. They can be easily assigned normal character's levels, commands, and the like, at least to my knowledge. Maybe you know a bit more about that then I do.
Back to the game, looking forward to seeing the (half-complete) ending!
Ah! So Golbez becomes a Paladin instead, going to Mt. Ordeals to take Cecil's place. That makes a great deal of sense! When I was testing I knew Golbez appeared, but didn't read anything past that.
Big Bang did not seem that powerful. Only dealing 200 damage to Tellah, and 900 to Cecil, shockingly.
Oh. Oh that second one did a number on me.
He was a little tricky, but wasn't that difficult to take out. Flare couldn't outright kill any character at full HP and with 31 Elixirs lined up I could throw them around like candy.
I love Zeromus' new closing lines, a lot more powerful than the basic "as long as there is evil..." and stopping there. Here he expresses what he means and it has much more impact.
Your idea for Zeromus makes a little more sense than FFIV's... what was Zeromus in the normal FFIV anyhow? Was he Zemus' spirit? A completely different entity of hate? I mean, it's just so strange. Yours it is made clear was a dark being that made a pact with Golbez but eventually corrupted Golbez's heart and the methods of his revival correspond to things that have been talked about in the game.
Tellah's line is fantastic, and also "obsession" is spelled wrong there. I think the game believes that the Yang Event Flag is triggered since he said his line as well.
Strangely enough though, Golbez did not appear. The sprite of the Paladin I mean. I know he had done so in my original testing.
From what you've completed of the ending, it is wonderful. You can see the decisions that were made taking effect (at least I'm assuming so that Kain wouldn't be with Bahamut in the ending had he not been left with Bahamut) and all the damage that Golbez had wrought was being undone. One small little glitch though when Edward and Tellah are leaving the throne room, Tellah is still in his waving animation instead of his walking animation. Also the idea to make Titan's sprite into a recolored Fabul Fighter was brilliant!
Well it's been a really fun ride and as you can guess I will look forward to completing it again when the ending is finished and then I'll start a run where Cecil becomes a Paladin with a completely different party.
Now for some suggestions...
Golbez's 180 turn comes across as him being very desperate. He had been defeated completely, but before then we don't know why he has chosen this path or caused all of this damage, or in the end why he would choose to truthfully repent. Judging from the ending it seemed he had good intentions that were subverted in some way. Were there any thoughts to address this deeper backstory for Golbez, since he wasn't just evil for evil's sake or brain-washed this time around?
Been playing through your hack and absolutely love it! I just got Palom and Porom.
I really, really like that it's taking awhile to get the airship, and that you're required to use the black chocobo for more than just the magnetic cave.
Love that Edward is actually useful. He made my final team in FF4A and TAY (yay Android remake! Sure, they just reused the FF4 engine, but hey, it's FF4!). He and Golbez are my two favorite characters. I can't wait to get him back! (I read through Grimoire's let's play and got very excited to play it, so I've got an idea of what's coming up next).
I chuckled at the Captain Planet reference.
Gave me the drive to make a hack that won't end up as a spoof! ... we'll see how long those good intentions last.
Anyway, thanks to you and everyone for ff4kster and the awesome hack!
Welcome Elvind! Yes this is a tour de force of FFIV modification from start to end and it started out as an exhibition of the editor and has succeeded in that by ten fold!
You are in quite a transitiony part of the mod. Where things can get really difficult, really fast, if you're not adequately prepared.
I am looking forward to seeing more of your reactions as well and if you have any questions about the mod, or FFIV hacking, feel free to ask and we'll do our best to answer!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 03, 2015, 05:59:53 AM
I tried to explain in the dialogue but maybe it doesn't come across... basically Golbez was just really power hungry. He clung to it to the bitter end and only when he was completely and utterly defeated did he realize what he had done.
Zeromus wasn't controlling Golbez; more like Golbez's greed and everyone else's hatred for him and thirst for revenge gave form to Zeromus.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 03, 2015, 11:21:52 AM
I tried to explain in the dialogue but maybe it doesn't come across... basically Golbez was just really power hungry. He clung to it to the bitter end and only when he was completely and utterly defeated did he realize what he had done.
Zeromus wasn't controlling Golbez; more like Golbez's greed and everyone else's hatred for him and thirst for revenge gave form to Zeromus.
I did understand that part, I was under the impression that Golbez received power from Zeromus and felt obliged to do his bidding, my mistake. Alright so Zeromus didn't bestow any powers upon Golbez, just the hate that people bore for Golbez and Golbez's own destructive measures drew Zeromus into existence.
That's all well and good, but what was Golbez's end goal? Was it to rule the land? If so, why would he want to? What would make him think that he was a better caretaker of the world than the rest of the nations? You've noted that he repents what he has done after he is utterly defeated which means there must have been a spark of good to turn into a flame as such which leads me to think the old adage of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" may apply here. You did mention something about Fabul in that is where Ricard died, hinting that Odin and his countrymen fought *something* else sometime ago and if that was another kingdom it may stand to reason that Golbez saw a cycle of repeating war unless something was done?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 03, 2015, 07:19:13 PM
I think those kind of questions are beyond the scope of what I'm going for in this hack. The past is deliberately only vaguely hinted at; the player is free to fill in the details with their own head canon. As for Golbez, who says he needs a specific end goal? He craves power and does what it takes to feed the craving. It could very well be that had he won he could have just been like, "hm, what now..." For him the power is the goal.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 03, 2015, 08:18:42 PM
I think those kind of questions are beyond the scope of what I'm going for in this hack. The past is deliberately only vaguely hinted at; the player is free to fill in the details with their own head canon. As for Golbez, who says he needs a specific end goal? He craves power and does what it takes to feed the craving. It could very well be that had he won he could have just been like, "hm, what now..." For him the power is the goal.
A good point, this is based on the SNES version after all which purposely seemed to trim character's backstories here and there. That's fine then.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: vivify93 on June 11, 2015, 04:03:32 AM
Unprecedented Crisis? Interesting name, I remember using the phrase in one of my NPC dialogues in Project II. Did the title come from that at all, or is it just coincidence? :p
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 11, 2015, 06:42:00 AM
I'm embarrassed to say, I have yet to check out Project II. The phrase comes from the original translation. The king of Fabul says it right before you depart on the boat.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Bydoless on June 12, 2015, 01:02:54 AM
So I've played this up to the Misty Mountains. I beat Scarmilogne or whatever his name is twice, then tried to leave only to be spat out in the middle of the overworld's ocean.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: vivify93 on June 12, 2015, 05:40:18 PM
I'm embarrassed to say, I have yet to check out Project II. The phrase comes from the original translation. The king of Fabul says it right before you depart on the boat.
Ah, it's OK. I must've taken that line from the original, then. :)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 13, 2015, 07:14:34 AM
So I've played this up to the Misty Mountains. I beat Scarmilogne or whatever his name is twice, then tried to leave only to be spat out in the middle of the overworld's ocean.
Did you leave in the sense of walking back out the way you came? Or riding down the falls?
If you tried to walk back (toward the save point) then I think I know what may have happened... the game tries to "warp" you back to your last location... which was where the ship sank... I know how to fix that. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on June 16, 2015, 12:02:57 AM
I've just got to the Misty Mountains myself and I'm liking what you're doing. One typo I've noticed is that Rydia's Summon in her magic menu(Out of Combat) is labeled Sumn u. Yang's Chakra is pretty pointless right now because it doesn't recover enough HP to be useful.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 16, 2015, 05:43:32 AM
Glad you're enjoying it so far! I'm aware of the sumn_u thing... I'll hopefully have that fixed soon. As for Chakra, it's proportional to Yang's current HP. So it's good for keeping his momentum going but it won't save him from the brink of death. In theory, since it's proportional, it should be about equally useful throughout the game.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on June 18, 2015, 05:45:21 PM
So far the story's doing great and I like some the plot twists that have shown up however gameplay wise I've been noticing some issues
Cecil needs something to keep him viable, when Edward was in the party he could consistently stay on the offense though it seemed everybody did it better once Edward got Fairy. In Elban he spent most fights throwing potions and hoping not to be 2-shoted. He was fine in the caves because Rydia got Sylph and the Flame Sword has helped a lot. I've only used his status spells a few times and most of the time they miss, so maybe giving them 100% acc unless the target is immune(Cecil would get a lot more mileage out of them).
Despite Elban being more important this time around, it still comes out of nowhere unless you've played the game before. Also I didn't know that I could walk that small distance between Elban's forest and it's castle. Was I underleveled or did the difficultly ramp up around Elban? I'm in the underground now and since Elban I've been seeing 150~300 damage from several enemies and aside from Yang & Cid most characters can't take too many of those hits.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 18, 2015, 05:51:56 PM
So far the story's doing great and I like some the plot twists that have shown up however gameplay wise I've been noticing some issues
Cecil needs something to keep him viable, when Edward was in the party he could consistently stay on the offense though it seemed everybody did it better once Edward got Fairy. In Elban he spent most fights throwing potions and hoping not to be 2-shoted. He was fine in the caves because Rydia got Sylph and the Flame Sword has helped a lot. I've only used his status spells a few times and most of the time they miss, so maybe giving them 100% acc unless the target is immune(Cecil would get a lot more mileage out of them).
Despite Elban being more important this time around, it still comes out of nowhere unless you've played the game before. Also I didn't know that I could walk that small distance between Elban's forest and it's castle. Was I underleveled or did the difficultly ramp up around Elban? I'm in the underground now and since Elban I've been seeing 150~300 damage from several enemies and aside from Yang & Cid most characters can't take too many of those hits.
A quick question, what is your Cecil equipped with at the moment? Also what is your level?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on June 18, 2015, 06:44:20 PM
Before Elban it was mostly the Shadow Equipment & Swapping the Ancient & Coral Swords. Currently he has Sleep,Flame Shd,Viking Helm,Flame Armor,Power Gloves and he's Lv28. I've been fighting in the Ice Mine in order to gain enough money for better gear.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 18, 2015, 07:26:56 PM
Before Elban it was mostly the Shadow Equipment & Swapping the Ancient & Coral Swords. Currently he has Sleep,Flame Shd,Viking Helm,Flame Armor,Power Gloves and he's Lv28. I've been fighting in the Ice Mine in order to gain enough money for better gear.
Yep, that seems about average, if not a little high.
Here are some tips about using Cecil... he isn't really a powerhouse, no. About the time of Eblan he begins to falter and throughout the Tower of Babil is only a support role. Edge quickly steals the show. What he does have going for him are his status spells.
Poison at the start of the game deals some decent damage and since the Poison status was removed, it deals Sap, dealing continual damage for a short period of time. Mute is great when dealing with spell casters, since status effects don't seem too changed thus far.
One thing that is Imperative to keep in mind is the usefulness of Blind. Blind cuts the hit rate of physical attacks in half which can really mitigate much of the damage and very few foes resist Blind and it has 100% hit rate.
It takes some getting used to, but you're in the part of the game where Cecil can easily regain his mantle as a powerhouse with the wealth of items at your disposal and if you feel your defenses are adequate you can throw on a Judo Outfit for extra damage, remember every 8 Strength is an Attack Multiplier along with every 16 Agility!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 28, 2015, 09:29:21 PM
Hah... I just noticed a secret in Mist I missed my first two times through. How unobservant of me to never notice this place!
Oh, it leads to the Serpent Road, this might be one of the areas you've newly changed from the last version.
Well made it back through the Misty Mountains, this time I decided to throw caution to the wind, leveled up Rydia to 20, fought Scarmiglione and used Ifrit to defeat the Revenant, the Bio is strong, dealing 700 damage to Cecil because of his lack of magic defenses, but only 200-300 to the others, seemingly. It took several turns, but Scarmiglione 1 was defeated. Scarmiglione 2 was also quickly removed by Ifrit, though still dealing large chunks of damage with Quake.
I am now back up to Troia.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on June 29, 2015, 04:07:18 AM
The holy resistance from the shadow gear probably makes him weak to dark.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on June 30, 2015, 11:17:34 AM
Ah, I was unaware that the Shadow gear had that in this version.
Well I am back up to Eblan Hideout, I handled Rubicante in a bit of a different way this time. The first time I just put my people on Berserk, and that ended disastrously because of the Fire 2 Counter (which I think is the point) so second time around I bided my time, I threw Shurikens but this time around I'm not going to use Edge for only Shurikens, but I noticed you set it up as a "feature" of the fight since it doesn't deal a Counterattack, I used several Ice-Bombs with Cid when his cape was open for great amounts of damage and managed to get a Shiva or two in there.
Still a really great fight. I see new Serpent Road locations in Agart and Eblan Castle, may have missed some others thus far. I also stopped in Mythril to pick up two Giant's gloves for Cid and Cecil. Since Cid is going full-damage this run I left the Battle Axe alone.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 02, 2015, 02:41:36 PM
All that's left of the Underworld is the Tower of Babil, I am glad to see that Giott now has a new line and Luca's new line is adorably sad.
My full attack set worked out pretty well, I of course had problems with Ciriatto, I always do, but I found his first phase much more manageable this time around. I lost to the second phase once because of bad luck (DarkHoly on Porom, Revived Porom, used X-Potion, Bio was used before her turn came up, Death hit Porom, and that was the game) Edge in the front row does actually save me a fair amount of cash, and his Ashura blade can deal some rather good damage. One thing I learned during the Ciriatto first phase is that the Flame Sword can deal some great damage to the Zombies more reliably than tossing X-Potions can.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 03, 2015, 10:59:08 AM
I made it back to the first Golbez fight and I've just realized you set it up so it's possible to win! I wasn't doing too terribly at first, but then things did start to go wrong, now I'm wondering if there's any specific prize for winning...
Aww... despite winning and getting a decent chunk of Gil you don't actually get anything for it, bah.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 03, 2015, 02:18:58 PM
What? It's possible to win?? That's definitely not the intent. How did you avoid Hold Gas?
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 03, 2015, 02:23:46 PM
What? It's possible to win?? That's definitely not the intent. How did you avoid Hold Gas?
Cecil and Kain's Power Gauntlets protect against Hold (and now that I look at it in FF4kster a Lot of other things as well!) Which keeps them from being hit by Hold Gas. I had thought it was intended because Golbez has a normal attack pattern after that and the Shadow Dragon has a counter attack of well... attack. You could also jump at the right time and prevent Kain from being hit with it at all and because of his natural high magical defenses he should fare well enough to get a couple more people up since the weakness of the Shadow Dragon and Golbez is they only have single target attacks past the first part of their script.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Nephrite on July 05, 2015, 04:05:52 PM
I don't know if this is really the right place, but I just saw your hack on Romhacking.net and noticed Grimoire was posting his playthrough, so I thought I'd post a few comments:
After you get the Earth Crystal from Troia/Toroia, there's no indication at all you're supposed to go to Eblan. I think it would be good to change the dialogue before you leave to something like "I heard that another of the Fiends was on his way to Eblan! You should head there!" so that it's more clear that's where you're supposed to go.
Beyond that, the only small thing I'd say is I think it's really lame you don't get Float for the dungeons in the underground. If it's your intention to make them more challenge, then that's fine, but I think that it's kind of a lame way to do it.
EDIT: Ciriatto is way too hard. I don't know what levels you're intending him to be fought at, but he's so fast in both forms 1 and 2 that I'm finding it nearly impossible to beat him. Form 1 can be dealt with via Stop, which is fine, but form 2? He gets an immediate HP-1 on you, then almost instantly casts MT Bio and then you die. How are you supposed to handle that? Even if you say "Well go level up more to get better spells," then how do you handle the later part of the fight where he casts HP-1 again and you've still got the Sap from Bio?
Honestly, I applaud your effort in making him a challenge but he's far too difficult in my opinion. I think you need to make him only cast Bio single target like form 1. Then Dark Wave attack is also a little... ..well, that one's not so bad I guess.
If he's intended to be fought in the mid 30s or even early 30s, then the experience in the Feymarch cave needs to go up. I found myself just running from most of the fights there because the monsters were not rewarding enough for the time investment. The Ice Mines were fine in terms of HP:Experience and Bahamut's Lagoon (great name) enemies gave a boat ton of experience but were also quite hard.
EDIT2: I think I came off far too negative with my comments about Ciriatto, so I want you to know that I 100% approve of your boss mechanics so far. All of the fiends have felt thematically appropriate and very fun to fight. I think you've really done a great job so far.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 05, 2015, 06:36:01 PM
Thanks for the feedback. These are common complaints.
Eblan: It will be mentioned in the dialogue in a future update.
Float: I might make float learned a little earlier in the next version but not much earlier. If you can float as soon as you encounter damage floor then the damage floor is pointless.
Ciriatto: He's definitely beatable with proper timing and strategy. I might tone him down in the update a little though. We'll see.
Anyway, glad you're enjoying it overall.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: chillyfeez on July 05, 2015, 08:15:19 PM
Silly suggestion alert. Take it or leave it, just a thought that popped into my head: Call the Enterprise "Heart of Gold" instead of "TARDIS." It still fits the "famous fictional British spaceships" theme, plus then "Red Dwarf" and "Heart of Gold" have colors in their names that match their actual colors. Not to mention the fact that TARDIS is an acronym whose meaning does not apply...
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 06, 2015, 04:01:05 AM
It's a different acronym in this. Torque And Rotor Driven Interface System.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: chillyfeez on July 06, 2015, 04:51:07 AM
OK, fair enough. Clearly I haven't actually gotten to the point of acquiring it yet. :blush:
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 06, 2015, 01:38:04 PM
I've beaten both the game 2x(both Dk & Pal) and it's probably one of the best FF hacks I've played. There's only a few things that I had issues with...
Elban - it's been mentioned
Float - It should be learned a little earlier because I doubt most people will break 40 before the tower of babil.
Ciriatto - His 1st form was harder than his second because I forgot to switch Cecil & Edge's equipment. His 2nd form isn't too hard unless Bio comes out immediately after Fallen Angel(I thought Dark Holy was used after Fallen Angel?)
DK post Babil - Is it possible to add another sword for DK after Babil? Maybe a Dark version of the Excalibur(i.e. a Wis +15 sword) inorder to bridge the gap between Blood/Avenger & Deathbringer.
Rosa - She seems a poor choice once Babil is finished. Her magic isn't anything special though she has good synergy with Pal Cecil. Her advantages over fighters is that she can stay in the back though Edge has that option too and her good magic defense. She just doesn't seem "unique" compared to the rest of the party.
I liked how the ending sequence differed depending what party members you had. I'd say more however I don't know how to hide spoilers.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 06, 2015, 02:35:05 PM
Rosa has more options in terms of strong elemental and racial physicals. She also gets some awesome time magic later like Comet, Reflect, and even Meteo. I might look at giving her some other minor advantage but she's probably fine as is.
DK can use the Break blade... that's certainly something, but in any case there isn't a lot of room for new weapons and the overworld is the paladin's turn to shine. DK rules the underground.
This thread spoils all. Spoil away, my friend.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Nephrite on July 06, 2015, 09:33:15 PM
I think something that would help with Ciriatto is to look at the experience tables for some of the dungeons.
Off the top of my head, this is the average EXP per battle in these dungeons:
I think toning up the experience in Feymarch by about double what it is now would be very helpful. The Tower of Babil also could use some love in terms of experience, and maybe a slight toning down on the Lagoon and Eblana cave? I'm not an expert on the matter so I can't say for certain.
One other comment I'd make is Rydia's summons seem to be pretty bad in comparison to Palom's Black Magic. It may just be that she's in a bad level range (mid 40s) but Quake seems to do more damage than Titan for less MP and Rydia just got BIRD! which doesn't strike me as that useful unless there are some high HP enemies that can be petrified (which there might be...).
Again, I really do enjoy this hack and appreciate all the time and effort you've put into it. If there's anything I can do to help I'd be happy to do so.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 06, 2015, 11:14:59 PM
The Elbana Cave is that high mainly to ease level grinding. Here's a figure for you: Paladin Cecil went from Lv 10 to Lv 45 in 2~ hrs fighting Alerts in Elbana Cave.
Am I reading too much into it or did Cecil adopt Rydia in the ending? I hope so because it certainly fits his guilty conscience and the fact that she isn't an adult. Also Edge's skirt chasing is nowhere near as disturbing as in the original. I did find it funny that Cecil is more merciful as a DK than as a Pal and Golbez returning the crystals during the ending was a nice touch. I can see Zeromus looking on in shock as DK Cecil ground him to a pulp after his true form was revealed by Golbez.
Rosa's Yoichi Bow could use a racial and instead of adding another Dark Sword, how about increasing Chaos's Atk to about 85ish. Also the Crystal Gauntlets incorrectly give Bolt res instead of Dark res. The Black robe has no resistances, was this an oversight? Looking at FF4kster, I noticed that I missed a few armors. Am I right to assume that these are rare drops? My only other issue is that a few of DK & Rosa's spells are either learned too late (Death,Break,Galaxy) or seem to be situational(Drain,Galaxy). DK's Death & Break are learned at 60 & 66 which mean they're most likely learned after Deathbringer is obtained. Drain is completely overclassed by the Blood sword(Maybe make it the Lv3 version on Poison & Bio). Galaxy is basically a MT Stop and comes off as great however at Lv60 there's only a few fights that it's viable for.
I like your idea on RHDN and Grimoire's is pretty interesting as well. Thank you for such a good hack.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 07, 2015, 03:24:25 PM
Well I'm glad to see the Rosa decision was fixed.
Rosa: Cecil! Help!
WARNING: Saving the main character's girlfriend will make her immediately join the party!
Cecil: Uh... maybe later Rosa.
OctoSoul was quite a challenging fight (because of this reckless playthrough. No one is optimized for defense) but the Wightslayer deals near 9999 to him with every attack which I assume is part of the reason for its existence.
but it is a frantic race to reach that point. A very well designed boss, one that I imagine would be much tougher with the Dark Knight.
EDIT: Well! No wonder Rosa failed! She attacked the OctoSoul with no weapon or armor equipped!
EDIT 2: Hmm, as far as I can make out there is not Serpent Road exit from Fabul so once you go there, you're stuck. Unless it's hidden quite well (as it is in Mist)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 07, 2015, 04:06:51 PM
It should be in the passage in the throne room. Instead of going right to get the treasure, continue down.
The Wightslayer is anti-undead, anti-spirit, and holy elemental, making it pretty amazing at killing evil things. For that specific purpose it can even compete with most of the other holy swords.
I have some cute ideas in mind for OctoSoul's reaction script. Also Rosa took her equipment in there but... "Rosa: and soon there were tentacles everywhere!"
:edit: I reprogrammed OctoSoul's reaction script and I think you're going to love this battle now! When you fight him in the next version, I reccommend doing at least one if not all of the following: * Use fire magic on him * Cast a summon spell on him * Target him with Twin * Attack him with Yang (not just anyone, Yang specifically)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 08, 2015, 09:48:24 AM
I had a feeling Wightslayer was Anti-Spirit, did not know about Anti-Undead, a good way to keep it competitively useful!
Haha, I will have to try those out on the next playthrough then.
Ah yes, has there been any more thought given to a "second" final dungeon to create a "Void" like area to give the chosen party more of a deciding presence? It would also help split out the treasure a little more since they're all pretty crammed together in the Lunar Subterrane and it would give the chosen Cecil a chance to try out their new toys before the game is already over.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 08, 2015, 10:22:10 AM
Instead of adding a new dungeon, the Lunar Core could be fleshed out into a full dungeon instead of the final march to the Zeromus. Also as a neat joke, have the OctoSoul drop a plausible piece of Rosa's equipment.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 08, 2015, 10:39:11 AM
I like the treasure drop idea Lumiere!
Rune bow Armlet Ninja outfit Black cowl
In some order I'll decide later.
The trouble with creating a new dungeon is map space. It is something I would definitely like to do but it probably won't be ready for this version.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 08, 2015, 03:15:56 PM
Is it possible to change the Moon bosses a bit,(Not the Fiends & Golbez) because they come off as kinda bland considering how many original bosses are fought.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 08, 2015, 10:48:52 PM
Having played a bit more I just got the Triton Dagger back and while it does work... it deals less than 100 damage to all foes. I imagine this is using Big Wave or something and still has a high Spell Power from when it was casting Leviathan.
I did get the Ragnarok now though and I must say that is some impressive power!
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 09, 2015, 04:12:40 AM
I might mix up the moon bosses' AI a bit. We'll see.
I guess I'll have to change Triton's spell cast once again.
Ragnarok is quite strong but leaves you vulnerable due to its two-handedness. Defender is the best for the defense build, STQ is good for speed, Excalibur for spellcasting, and Wightslayer for slaying evil spirits and undead abominations.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 09, 2015, 08:42:20 PM
Hmm, so the Muramasa casts Drain... and seemed to recover 90 HP, this was against an enemy with strong Magical Defense mind you, but by the time you get the Muramasa that's all there is. Against a foe with very little Magic Defense it recovers about 590 which I assume was the general amount you were going for.
Also what is being mentioned on the Romhacking topic... oh how i would love to be able to display "Strong Against X, Effective Against X Status Protection X,Y,Z but the status menu is abit chock full. Here are the options for the Status Menu that can be gotten rid of...
Class/Handedness/HP/MP (because it's already right there...) and the word Ability (which never made sense really)
The issue would be that we would need new small text graphics for the elements and the statuses.
The easiest option is to do what I did for Combat Boost and what Grond's FFI used, just have a text file with all of the stat boosts, resistances, weapon elements, and racial effectiveness. I'd be willing to cook one up for you after this playthrough actually.
I am finished with everything on the Overworld and am just about to head to the Moon.
:edit: Well, I did visit Bahamut with Rydia and as you mentioned there is a bit extra there. A cute little reference. I'm not sure what Bahamut is referring to though when he says that Rydia is not the last of the Summoners though.
Also Kain is still nowhere to be found and Bahamut still says "T" when you go to revisit him.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 10, 2015, 02:46:46 AM
Kain reappears to kill the Shadow Dragon if you dropped him off before fighting Golbez however, Bahamut never changes his message.
Here's a text file with almost all the equipment in the game(I double checked it with FF4kster to make sure it was correct). I did leave out the 2 rare rings and the rare helmet because I never actually found them. I didn't note if an item was throwable or non-magnetic.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 11, 2015, 11:19:33 AM
I just made it to Golbez and beat him and does the story completely change on whether you chose to stay a Dark Knight or become a Paladin?
I was expecting the path of mercy to follow with... being a Paladin and this talk of hatred and revenge that Zeromus fed upon as the results of being a Dark Knight, or is there something more at play here? Does continuing as a Dark Knight allow Cecil to sympathize with Golbez ever so slightly and thereby prevent the party from killing him?
Or is this a completely rewritten final scenario? I have noticed that there is no going back once you reach this point which is new to this version.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 11, 2015, 11:30:54 AM
Golbez's fate depends exactly upon whether you became a paladin or not. Once you reach that point, there's no going back and changing your mind.
The paladin will slay Golbez and Zeromus will awaken, having fed upon Golbez's greed and now the culmination of the party's revenge.
The dark knight will subdue him but then Golbez will beg for his life, not only for his own sake, but to prevent the above scenario, now that the gravity of it hits him.
This will also affect how the Zeromus battle plays out.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 11, 2015, 03:20:50 PM
ENDGAME SPOILERS!!!
There is something interesting to be said of the dichotomy between the Dark Knight and Paladin paths. The Paladin was all about righteous vengeance and to avenge what Golbez had done inadvertently feeding Zeromus' power. where as the Dark Knight is willing to show mercy to Golbez because of an understanding of that same darkness this actually aligns well with the entire original idea of the Dark Knight as mentioned in the scenario guide where the Dark Knight is struggling against the darkness continually. So... despite what disembodied voice says on Mt. Ordeals, Darkness does overcome Darkness because it was that same action in sparing Golbez which allows them to fight Zeromus. Dark Knight Cecil overcame those overwhelming feelings of hate and vengeance that allows Paladin Cecil to slay Golbez. Always glad to see a Light path that is more intrinsically gray morality, well done!
That said this path gave me quite a bit of a challenge! Draghinazzo in the Eight Fiends fight is rather difficult to take down without the Dark Knight Cecil and he hammers the party away with Comet, whereas with the Dark Knight he is as easy as he ever was. Rosa was a good fighter able to deal medium to good damage and exploit elemental weaknesses well. Edge was kept in the front row throughout the entire game and though he couldn't take a hit, he could hit hard and could often take advantage of either an elemental or racial weakness with the Mage Masher or the Ashura Katana which I even brought into the final dungeon with me. Kain's quite versatile as well. Holy on the Holy Spear actually seems decent now and the Gungnir dealing x4 to Machine is a godsend! And once you have the Dragon Spear you can really wreck those pesky dragons. The Artemis Bow also helped with that. Surprisingly the Lightbringer, at least compared to the Deathbringer didn't seem that great. I got Asura too late in the game but the Party Blink Defense is a really nice spell to get!
Zeromus was a rather tricky foe to face. He seemed faster, and I threw everything I could at him and several times I had thought I lost even though I was chucking Elixir's left and right but he finally fell eventually.
I finished the game around Level 53-60 this time around.
The ending worked out very well, especially if you go with the classic party. Cecil becomes your main healer which aligns well with the role of Paladin as Protector and his super revive of the party makes a great deal of sense in that respect.
I enjoyed all of the little ending scenes you put, especially restored Damcyan to put the Fire Crystal back that was a very nice touch! I also really liked how you ended the game as it began, Cecil returns what he had taken from Mysidia.
Your ending scroll (great use of the "Mysidian Legend" effect by the way) was fantastic! The final line is interesting and almost makes it seem like a lead in to FFV... or FFI, or FFIII.
Well that's this playthrough done with. Next time I will try to go Solo Cecil challenge, if such a thing is possible, since you had mentioned that as a possible path once you get rid of all party members.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 11, 2015, 04:01:20 PM
That said this path gave me quite a bit of a challenge! Draghinazzo in the Eight Fiends fight is rather difficult to take down without the Dark Knight Cecil and he hammers the party away with Comet, whereas with the Dark Knight he is as easy as he ever was.
Kotetsu is dark, and Rosa has dark arrows. They can be your main fighters in that battle while Cecil heals and/or negates some blinks.
Rosa was a good fighter able to deal medium to good damage and exploit elemental weaknesses well. Edge was kept in the front row throughout the entire game and though he couldn't take a hit, he could hit hard and could often take advantage of either an elemental or racial weakness with the Mage Masher or the Ashura Katana which I even brought into the final dungeon with me.
Oh for sure. Those Warlocks just fall over flat to Mage Masher.
Kain's quite versatile as well. Holy on the Holy Spear actually seems decent now and the Gungnir dealing x4 to Machine is a godsend! And once you have the Dragon Spear you can really wreck those pesky dragons. The Artemis Bow also helped with that. Surprisingly the Lightbringer, at least compared to the Deathbringer didn't seem that great. I got Asura too late in the game but the Party Blink Defense is a really nice spell to get!
Paladin's ultimate weapon isn't quite as ultimate, but he has more options than DK. DK basically has what he had in the underworld all the way up until you get Deathbringer, with the possible exception of the Break Blade if you got Tellah.
I enjoyed all of the little ending scenes you put, especially restored Damcyan to put the Fire Crystal back that was a very nice touch! I also really liked how you ended the game as it began, Cecil returns what he had taken from Mysidia.
Thanks! That part was on purpose. Also Cid remaking the Red Wings with Baigan in command hearkens back to the opening.
Your ending scroll (great use of the "Mysidian Legend" effect by the way) was fantastic! The final line is interesting and almost makes it seem like a lead in to FFV... or FFI, or FFIII.
The "four warriors" thing is a common trope in Final Fantasy so it's up to you what you want that to refer to, but I think FF5 makes a lot of sense as it's the next game, but you could certainly interpret the game as having been, say, a prequel to 1 or 3.
Well that's this playthrough done with. Next time I will try to go Solo Cecil challenge, if such a thing is possible, since you had mentioned that as a possible path once you get rid of all party members.
It's certainly possible to create a party of solo Cecil. I hope it's beatable like that. It should be. I currently don't have any events checking for solo Cecil, but there might be in a later version.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 12, 2015, 01:34:51 PM
I just loaded up a DK file and got rid of the party and tried to do a solo run. After leveling for a while, I tried to take on the Fiends and I ran into a big problem:Petrify... After looking at FF4kster, there are 2 versions with 50 and 100% Hit respectively. Even at level 60, I can't deal enough damage to defeat Scarmiglione before he casts Petrify and I'm not sure if equipping the Aegis shield will help because of DK's non-existant will.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 12, 2015, 01:45:21 PM
Next version, the Aegis shield will protect against the entire first column of statuses; so, Petrify, as well as KO, Blind, Mute, the form-changing statuses, etc.
:edit: it will protect against the statuses that make you lose a solo game: KO, Petrify, Sleep, Stun. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way for it to make you stop-immune.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 12, 2015, 03:33:44 PM
Aegis is a good choice because I know that in V, it grants immunity vs Petrify. Due to the fact that there's no way to be immune to stop, maybe remove it from the last few "boss" battles such as the Fiends,Golbez & Zeromus(replace it with slow or something). The optional bosses don't have much for a solo run and in a solo run the Crystal & Hades sets offer little. Another suggestion I have for a solo run is to make the Armlet available to everybody because it's basically the racial version of the Ribbon however Cecil, Kain and Cid are barred from it. If that is too gamebreaking, give a few more racial resistances to a weaker armor set geared specifically for a solo run.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 12, 2015, 04:35:54 PM
Aegis is a good choice because I know that in V, it grants immunity vs Petrify. Due to the fact that there's no way to be immune to stop, maybe remove it from the last few "boss" battles such as the Fiends,Golbez & Zeromus(replace it with slow or something). The optional bosses don't have much for a solo run and in a solo run the Crystal & Hades sets offer little. Another suggestion I have for a solo run is to make the Armlet available to everybody because it's basically the racial version of the Ribbon however Cecil, Kain and Cid are barred from it. If that is too gamebreaking, give a few more racial resistances to a weaker armor set geared specifically for a solo run.
Default IV it protects against Petrify as well, I do think that maybe one of the stupidly rare items could be turned into those "solo only" items. I think the issue is how do you guarantee that the player will be going solo when those items are obtained? Since you did say you wanted some rewards from a solo run all together. Perhaps the Aegis shield should be taken away from the Feymarch and Kain and be made into an item that Edge gives you when he leaves the party? I feel a similar sense about what to do when Kain leaves the party with a Dragon Sword. (I think the Mythril Knife would be an easy sacrifice for it. By the time you get it, it's not that much better than the normal Knife.)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 12, 2015, 04:46:43 PM
Currently, Kain leaving already rewards you by not having to fight the dang shadow dragon. The twins reward you with access to the serpent road and a whole bunch of free EXP in the form of trap doors. Edge doesn't really give you anything; I agree that losing him should also result in a side benefit of some kind. Maybe he can indeed give you a special item, but the thing with that is: How/why does he have it, and why didn't he just give it to you before? I don't think the Aegis Shield, even with those resistances, would be anything particularly special anyways. It would just happen to be particularly useful for a solo. Maybe he picked it up / stole it from Lugae while you were fighting the CPU? "Hey Lugae dropped this, you should take it."
... wait
I've already got the code working for the game detecting whether you're solo or not... why not just have it SKIP the eight-fiend battle when you're solo Cecil! Golbez is so impressed that you came to face him alone that he accepts the 1v1 challenge! I don't think any monsters after Malacoda 2 use Stop or Magnet, so the Aegis should be enough to cover any other circumstance like that... what do you think? (This is independent of Edge giving you something.)
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 12, 2015, 04:59:13 PM
Currently, Kain leaving already rewards you by not having to fight the dang shadow dragon. The twins reward you with access to the serpent road and a whole bunch of free EXP in the form of trap doors. Edge doesn't really give you anything; I agree that losing him should also result in a side benefit of some kind. Maybe he can indeed give you a special item, but the thing with that is: How/why does he have it, and why didn't he just give it to you before? I don't think the Aegis Shield, even with those resistances, would be anything particularly special anyways. It would just happen to be particularly useful for a solo. Maybe he picked it up / stole it from Lugae while you were fighting the CPU? "Hey Lugae dropped this, you should take it."
... wait
I've already got the code working for the game detecting whether you're solo or not... why not just have it SKIP the eight-fiend battle when you're solo Cecil! Golbez is so impressed that you came to face him alone that he accepts the 1v1 challenge! I don't think any monsters after Malacoda 2 use Stop or Magnet, so the Aegis should be enough to cover any other circumstance like that... what do you think? (This is independent of Edge giving you something.)
I like it! That would somewhat suit Golbez's character as well. Very creative thinking there. I would be curious to see the code you made for the Solo Check though. That sounds like an idea with a lot of potential in many other areas.
That was my original thinking on what to do with Edge, that he would find something in the Giant of Babil while chasing Lugae and give it to Cecil.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Lumiere77 on July 12, 2015, 06:07:56 PM
Skipping the Fiends fight would work out fine because it's mainly supposed to be a party vs party fight and if you're alone it would make sense to fight Golbez 1 on 1.
As for the item Edge gives you, how about the Glass Mask? It could be passed off as a mask Lugae used when he worked on Balnab and other experiments... Of course it would have to be nerfed a little because getting it before the moon is a little broken. Going back to the Aegis shield, you can either leave it on Kain & let it be buyable OR place it where the Defender is and move the Defender somewhere(maybe Bahamut's mooncave).
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Pinkpuff on July 15, 2015, 05:01:46 AM
Ok, I've decided what Edge will give you, but it's a surprise. :laugh:
I will say though that it is a one-time-use item, not an equipment. That said, it is not a generic item. It is only obtainable by ditching Edge.
Title: Re: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis
Post by: Grimoire LD on July 15, 2015, 11:54:36 AM